Terence Zhao – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 18 Jun 2019 00:30:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Terence Zhao – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Zhao: The last one https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/16/zhao-the-last-one/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/06/16/zhao-the-last-one/#respond Sun, 16 Jun 2019 07:07:42 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1155924 One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me about Stanford is just how elite it is. From the famous people we get to randomly meet at events to the let's-change-the-world outlook to the sheer weight of the Stanford name as a byword for excellence, the elite status of this school is constantly being reinforced, both in us the students, and in the outside world, intensely to the point of obnoxiousness.

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One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me about Stanford is just how elite it is. From the famous people we get to randomly meet at events to the let’s-change-the-world outlook to the sheer weight of the Stanford name as a byword for excellence, the elite status of this school is constantly being reinforced, both in us as students and in the outside world, to the point of obnoxiousness.

For some time after I had arrived here, I thought I could use the fact that I grew up poor as a crutch to escape the association with elitism. But, eventually, I realized just how contrived this crutch had become. As I was shaped by that background, that background was becoming more and more irrelevant the longer I was at Stanford, outweighed by the progressively larger amount of privilege I am able to enjoy, accumulated through my Stanford education and my Stanford credentials. And now, as I am about to leave this place, it is clear to me, looking at my fellow graduates: We’re all elites now.

And we go forth from Stanford in truly extraordinary times. If you talk to me in person, you probably would have heard me summarize the incredible developments of our current times as the fact that we live in the worst fucking timeline — which, by the way, I think is true. But, to put it in less facetious terms, perhaps, we live in a time where the existing order of things appear to be crumbling. Crises and disasters of all kinds are amplified to unprecedented magnitudes; palpable frictions within the body politic explode into open riot in an instant; the long-accepted status quo is falling apart at the seams; and institutions that were once deeply familiar, predictable and reputable have plunged into disorder that baffle the most experienced observers. Stanford — an elite institution that forms the academic pillar of the present world order — is not exempt from this disintegration. And, in the wake of the admissions scandal (in which Stanford was, of course, directly implicated) and declining public confidence in our meritocracy (such as it is) in general, this institution’s reputation and power, too, could be shattered.

For all of Stanford’s devotion to idea of innovation, it is also traditional in the sense that its eliteness replicates itself, and it does so through us, the students. We have been trained to be custodians to carry on this legacy — to be the next set of names in the register of prominent alumni. However, by carrying on the eliteness of Stanford, we must recognize that we have become socialized to be part of, work within and ultimately maintain the system that sustains that eliteness to begin with. And in a time when that system is facing extraordinary strains, when crises appear structural, and when the way things are as we know it could very well soon be no more, mere maintenance seems hardly sufficient.

As President Obama once said, “I don’t want to learn how to play the game better; I want to put an end to the game-playing.It is always easier to stay on the beaten path, to simply do what has always been done and to strive to maintain the way things are. However, if there is ever a time to dispense with business as usual, this might be it. We could rest on Stanford’s laurels and carry on as usual in the hopes that if we just play the same old game a little better, things could go back to normal. Or, we could bravely go forth, leverage the immense privilege we have been bequeathed and confront our crises by creating anew.

In the past four years, I have written in the belief that the way things are is not the way things have to be, and that another, better world is possible, and I am so grateful for everyone along the way who has imagined with me together what that world might look like. We are living through truly trying times, but at the same time, I am also deeply hopeful for a better future that I know mankind could build together. To quote the legendary Jon Stewart:

“Let’s talk about the real world for a moment … I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt: We broke it … Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize.

But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation.”

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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This House would replace the US government with a military junta https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/31/this-house-would-replace-the-us-government-with-a-military-junta/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/31/this-house-would-replace-the-us-government-with-a-military-junta/#respond Fri, 31 May 2019 08:06:09 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1155725 Two years ago, a debate was thrown on this campus about whether or not to repeal Obamacare. At that time, I wrote the following: “At the time of this event, only 17 percent of Americans support the latest version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP replacement for Obamacare. While 17 percent doesn’t […]

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Two years ago, a debate was thrown on this campus about whether or not to repeal Obamacare. At that time, I wrote the following:

“At the time of this event, only 17 percent of Americans support the latest version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP replacement for Obamacare. While 17 percent doesn’t seem low, it is actually excruciatingly so in the context of polling numbers. For your reference, 29 percent of Americans surveyed back in 2015 supported replacing the Obama administration with a military junta. And, of course, anyone who seriously suggests a military coup — especially in the latter days of the Obama administration, where everything was going fairly smoothly — would be laughed out of any serious political conversation.

And yet, repealing Obamacare, a position that is even more on the fringe and almost twice as unpopular as, again, overthrowing the democratically elected U.S. government via a military coup, is somehow to be respected as a legitimate position that we should hear out, even though an overwhelming majority of Americans, including most Republicans, reject it.”

I don’t bring this up because I enjoy block quoting myself. I do it because the unfortunate situation of the day requires it. Because once again, a fringe, far-right view is being wrongly elevated to the position of mainstream on this campus.

On Tuesday, a debate was held between the Stanford Debate Society and the College Republicans, with the latter arguing that abortions are never justified — a stance in line with the latest wave of anti-abortion legislation being passed in states around the country such as  Alabama. Much like the Obamacare repeal two years ago, this is a stunningly unpopular position.

Gallup has been tracking public opinion on this stance / belief  since 1976, and support for banning all abortions has been consistently low, hovering at about 20 percent of the US population — it was 18 percent in 2018, although polls have that number as low as 14 percent. In other words, for as long as polling data exists, this idea has never been anything except deeply unpopular. Meanwhile, the idea of replacing the government with a military junta via coup, which I brought up two years ago, is still polling around 25 percent. But, let’s just not stop there! Here’s some more seemingly insane ideas that are actually less fringe in terms of popular support than this abortion ban: Making the President an autocrat? Supported by 22 percent of Americans. The proposition that interracial marriage is “morally wrong”? Supported by 20 percent of Americans.

This frame of reference shows just how fringe and unpopular abortion bans — which the College Republicans enthusiastically defend — truly are. This unpopularity is important to contextualizing the latest developments in abortion law. Like a lot of my fellow students here, I was mortified when I read about the draconian abortion laws, and had an acute moment of crisis where I asked myself: How could people support such a thing?

And the short answer, as the polling shows, is that people don’t. But, if I hadn’t done the research for this piece, I would have never known that less than one in five Americans supported these abortion bans, and that shows just how skewed our conversations on campus have been — not against conservative positions ranging from abortions to healthcare, but towards them.

We are being gaslighted. Gaslighted into believing that our views and values only seem popular or correct because we live in some sort of liberal bubble; gaslighted into believing that our views are incompatible with those of the “real Americans” from the “Heartland”; but, most importantly, gaslighted into believing that the extremist fringe views — whether it be this abortion ban or others — that the College Republicans endorse are somehow deserving of half the stage. We have grown so accustomed to the framing that somehow, the only reason we are not seeing as many, say, voices of support for these abortion laws on campus is because we are a liberal silo where conservative supporters for these laws are underrepresented or even silenced. The reality seems far more simple: We don’t see support for these views here because we’re not seeing them anywhere. These ideas are not repressed — just the opposite, they are given an immense platform, both on campus with this debate and nationally in far-right politicians. Yet, even then, they are just not that popular, not on this campus, not on other campuses and not in America as a whole.

But, for organizations like the College Republicans, they have no choice but to keep on spreading this nonsense narrative of ideological repression. It is a matter of survival, because the alternative is to admit that their ideas are bad and unpopular, which is to in turn concede their irrelevance on campus. If they want to continue to be dishonest actors and spread this false narrative, that is their prerogative. It is the responsibility, then, of every honest actor on this campus — everybody who wants a quality environment for campus discourse— to wise up and not fall for it.
And that is the ultimate hope — to build a better atmosphere for conversations and discourse at Stanford. To be clear, that does not mean silencing anyone or their opinions, however unpopular. However, it does mean that we should be taking a much closer look as to what conversations are being prioritized and what opinions are being brought to the forefront. By virtue of sheer logistics, there is a limit as to how many forums and debates like the one we had on abortion we could have. So, in this case, by giving a platform to the fringe idea of banning all abortions without any exceptions, far more relevant (and arguably productive) conversations had to fall by the wayside, including, for example, the deeply consequential topic of how we should regulate legal abortion. If as little as 14 percent of Americans want to ban all abortions, but as many as 86 percent want at least some abortions legal but don’t necessarily agree on which, the more relevant and useful conversation is clearly to talk about divisions within that camp, where I am sure there is a lot of healthy disagreement that might actually produce new understandings, change minds and be productive. However, we can’t: We’ve stopped talking about things that matter, because we’ve had our public forum hijacked by a tiny, vocal minority that whines for attention and insists we only focus on their bad ideas that no one supports. Once we reject the notion that they are a relevant voice in campus discourse, we might finally have the campus political climate that we and a world-class university such as this deserve.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The Millennial Mystique https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/17/the-millennial-mystique-2/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/17/the-millennial-mystique-2/#respond Sat, 18 May 2019 02:17:38 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1155109 I’ve had enough experience with speaker events about mental health to know that they proceed in predictable ways — the speaker’s story will strike a chord with the audience, who will then crowd the speaker to tell them about how much they related to their story. I was one of these speakers once, at the […]

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I’ve had enough experience with speaker events about mental health to know that they proceed in predictable ways — the speaker’s story will strike a chord with the audience, who will then crowd the speaker to tell them about how much they related to their story. I was one of these speakers once, at the 2018 New Student Orientation. After my talk, I was bombarded with compliments from well-meaning people ranging from audience members to a Vice Provost: things like how much my mental health struggles resonated with people, how powerful the narrative was and how important it was that narratives of mental health are being elevated, especially at a time when so many people are facing similar struggles in their own lives.

On the one hand, I of course appreciated the kind words and take them for the compliments that they were clearly meant to be. But, on the other, I couldn’t help but feel how strange it was that something like this would be considered a compliment. Replace “mental health issues” with any other illness, and you’ll see what I mean. Imagine someone saying something like:

“It must be so rewarding to see and know that there are so many people in that audience who also struggle with pneumonia, and who deeply resonate with your story and love that these pneumonic narratives are brought to the forefront…”

We can and should be grateful that increased mental health awareness has resulted in decreased stigma and taboo. But to declare victory on this alone would be ludicrous. Just because there has been a reduction in the taboo around mental health doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty of stigma for talking about it or seeking treatment — even in places like Stanford where mental health issues are comparatively less stigmatized.

For one thing, cultural change must be accompanied by robust improvements to an institutional and medical infrastructure that is, at present, sorely lacking. Both access to and quality of care continue to be dangerously inadequate, and one doesn’t need to look far to see these conditions. On Stanford’s campus, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) continues to struggle with long wait times and an inability to provide adequate long-term care.

As much as we can talk about the need for the University to increase funding for CAPS, the situation remains that even at a place of such concentrated wealth and resources, mental health services are just not keeping up. Though the necessity of better infrastructure for treatment and services is real, we must confront the underlying crisis and ask: What exactly has turned the mental health issue into an epidemic?

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When Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” was first published in 1963, it sent shockwaves through society by being the first to point out the “problem that has no name” — namely, the widespread unhappiness of middle-class housewives in American society, which Friedan attributed to their societally-enforced exclusion from the workplace. Friedan argued that middle-class women should be allowed to head to the workplace rather than be confined to domestic roles. That suggestion was revolutionary for the time. It showed that the way society was organized — that is, the status quo, the accepted way of doing things — was actually causing deep hurt to women and their psychological well-being on a horrific scale.

And, indeed, it is high time to question once again whether the way our society works in our “business as usual” manner is making us sick. Research has already demonstrated that economic anxiety tends to translate to worsening of mental health in myriad ways: For example, that unemployment worsens one’s mental health, that poverty and mental health issues often go hand in hand, or that, as one group of researchers from Columbia put it, if you’re “anxious” or “depressed”, “you might be suffering from capitalism.” We also know that the economic anxiety of this kind is very real at Stanford (as obscured by our obscene outward wealth as it can often be), where students are at times reduced to literally foraging fruits just so they could feed themselves.

When talking about mental health, then, we can’t forget about the overall economic state of our society, which is progressively worsening — especially for young people. The costs of basic life have skyrocketed. The cost of a home has risen to $119,000 in 2000, up more than threefold from what it was in 1940 even after accounting for inflation. It is no surprise, then, that the age profile of homebuyers in the US have changed significantly — in 1981, they were 25-34; now, they are 44. Cost of education has also skyrocketed to around 17 times what it had been in 1971. In fact, the cost of a college education is currently growing eight times as fast as wages. It is also no surprise, then, that the typical U.S. college student is now carrying $30,100 in student loans at the time of graduation.

Yet, at the same time, the job market has not kept up. Millennials, for example, currently face a 45 percent underemployment rate, which makes actually landing a decent-paying job that could enable paying for these increased costs — especially a job in a specific field of study — far from a certainty. Moreover, entry-level wages have noticeably sagged. The average young worker in 2012 was paid about 58 percent of the average wage in the country, compared to young workers in 1980, who were paid about 82 percent of it. All of this has millennials as the first generation in American history to earn less than their parents. For the average millennial born in the 1980’s, the chance that they will outearn their parents is less than half, which means that only a minority of millennials could be winners of this economic game by out-competing the majority of their peers either through circumstance or hard work.

In light of all this, it is plain to see that this mental health epidemic, while it may have caught many by surprise, did not come from nowhere: It came from a society that is becoming increasingly stratified and hypercompetitive, leaving everyone feeling more precarious, more under pressure and more stressed to push themselves to their limits to emerge as the winners of an increasingly winner-take-all system. We are rushing to optimize everything else in our lives at the expense of the most basic aspect of our existence — the health of our minds and bodies, and it is leaving us all more miserable because of it.

In the short term, I would love for everyone to be able to sit down with a professional and talk about their mental health, and I would love for everyone to be able to get the mental health treatments they need and deserve. This would not come cheap, but it would certainly be cheaper than the $16 trillion that the mental health crisis is on track to cost the global economy within the next decade. However, just as importantly, I also am certain that merely offering treatment for the symptoms would not be enough. We need to confront the root cause of the problem and examine the frightening ways in which, somehow, a mental health epidemic has become just another negative externality of the culture and society we live in. As one panelist at a February mental health event here at Stanford put it:

“We can’t stay on the merry go round, we have to fix the merry-go-round.”

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The college admissions crisis is structural https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/03/the-systematic-underbelly-of-the-college-admissions-scandal/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/05/03/the-systematic-underbelly-of-the-college-admissions-scandal/#respond Fri, 03 May 2019 08:52:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1154161 On May 1st, news finally broke regarding the identity of the former Stanford student who was expelled as part of the fall out surrounding the college admissions scandal. It is certainly good gossip material, because some of the details are truly breathtaking.

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On May 1st, news finally broke regarding the identity of the former Stanford student who was expelled as part of the fallout surrounding the college admissions scandal. It is certainly good gossip material, because some of the details are truly breathtaking. The full story reads like a TMZ expose in just how juicy it gets, but a quick recap: The parents of the student expelled from Stanford roughly a month ago in connection with the admissions scandal paid an extraordinary $6.5 million to Rick Singer, the mastermind behind the entire scandal.

How did they get this money? The student’s father is a billionaire and one of the wealthiest men in China, having amassed his fortune through a pharmaceutical company that keeps getting caught cheating its customers by making faulty drugs, which they then got approved by bribing drug regulators. We know this because one of those regulators, the Chinese equivalent of the head of the FDA, was tried, found guilty of taking these bribes and executed.

The specific aspects of this case are extremely helpful for putting into non-hypothetical terms the full range of ethical issues behind the admissions scandal. But, we also cannot let the fact that there is now a name and a face to the scandal (at least at Stanford) distract us and allow the scandal to become solely personal, because it is not. We could pretend that every grotesque aspect of this sordid affair can be attributable to the foibles of the one man who paid the bribe or the one man who facilitated it — the sensationalistic news coverage would have you believe as much — but we would be deluding ourselves. There are plenty of other people with obscene amounts of money that no one person ought to be able to have. There are plenty of heads of pharmaceutical companies who have done things that are significantly more odious (i.e. starting the entire opioid crisis). And, there are plenty of rich people who have used “donations” to get their kids into elite colleges, both illegally (as in this scandal) and through legal channels (just off the top of my head: Jared Kushner’s dad).

On some level, this is the scandal we deserve. Since we permit a system of college admissions that considers factors other than merit (for example, legacy status), we cannot then act shocked when the system admits students based on factors other than merit. Since we permit a system that allows people to profiteer off supposedly one of the world’s noblest professions, healing the sick, we cannot then act shocked when those profiteers then try to cut corners on the quality of our lifesaving remedies and bribe officials to keep it quiet, and we certainly cannot act shocked when they make billions doing it. Since we already permit a system that allows a single person to control more wealth than hundreds of millions of people and be so rich that a few million dollars feels like chump change, we cannot then act shocked when they spend that chump change on something that benefits them.

In other words, the scandal reflects systemic failures created through our own negligence and our passive consent — at the very minimum, that is, because there are plenty of folks who disagree that these are issues that need fixing. I know plenty of people, some of whom are dear friends, who are fine with pharmaceuticals being made by for-profit companies, or with the existence of billionaires or even with legacy preferences in college admissions — but that’s beside the point. What is undeniable is that if we set up a system where there exists back doors for people willing to pay obscene sums and where people are allowed to make those obscene sums through less-than-ethical means, there will be a perverse incentive to take advantage of such a system by anyone who has the opportunity to. That’s exactly why the admissions scandal has implicated so many. Indeed, while so many aspects of this case — especially the eye-popping size of the bribe — are so extraordinary to us, there is also nothing out of the ordinary about this particular bribe. This wasn’t the product of a particularly bad person, but was rather just another rational actor following their incentive structures.

This is not to excuse this particular incident or diminish its shocking details — far from it. But, it is easy to make a judgment on the details of this particular case: Of course bribery is wrong, of course it’s terrible that the money for this bribe was made — but these are easy pronouncements to make. So long as we focus on the particular details of this case, we miss the more difficult but horrifying fact that unless we have systemic changes in, if not our society, then at minimum our admissions system, none of this will change. There will be another rich parent paying an obscene sum to bribe their child into an elite institution. The parent will probably not be Chinese, they will probably not have made their fortunes in pharmaceuticals, and they probably will try to make the “donation” through legal channels in light of recent events — but none of that matters. What really matters is how this so-called meritocracy can be saved before it consumes itself through hypocrisy and bribery.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Mountaintop https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/24/mountaintop/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/04/24/mountaintop/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2019 08:00:26 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1153420 It is a strange feeling as a senior trying to give advice to incoming frosh. The expectation is simple: that I am to share certain aspects of my experience and my story in the hopes that someone else, looking forward as I am looking behind, could learn from that experience. And I suppose that this […]

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It is a strange feeling as a senior trying to give advice to incoming frosh. The expectation is simple: that I am to share certain aspects of my experience and my story in the hopes that someone else, looking forward as I am looking behind, could learn from that experience. And I suppose that this is a valuable resource because I am supposedly able to offer a perspective that is personal and authentic. But could I really?

An issue that I’ve increasingly encountered as I progressed through my upperclassman years here is how distinctly unauthentic my advice has become — at least to me. I can’t help but be a little frightened by how perfectly linear the narrative of my life always ends up sounding every time I speak, how the past four years just seem to be a perfect story arc where every class, professor, internship, friendship, relationship has been a step forward as part of this great perfect plan that has all led up to the present moment. What was supposed to be genuine advice ends up sounding like a college application essay.

And it is frightening, because I know for a fact that my journey for the past few years was not a perfect story arc by any means, and neither were those of my friends and peers. During my time here, I’ve had to contend with failures and setbacks, forks in the road and moments where I’ve had to reexamine my choices and goals. During those moments, there was no arc, no roadmap, no plan — just me, living through life, not knowing how the puzzle pieces of my life and the work I am doing each day will eventually fit together. During these times, I’ve often been reminded of a verse from the 11th-century Chinese poet Su Dongpo:

I cannot recognize the true face of the mountain,

Precisely because I am in its midst.

In a way, the past four years were exactly like a trek through the mountains. I certainly did also enjoy the view along the way, but it was also a matter of pressing on along the trail, not having any conception of what the mountains would turn out to look like once I reach the summit. Only now, as I am nearing the end of my time here, am I able to gain the clarity at this metaphorical mountaintop looking back down. On the one hand, that clarity is obviously rewarding; on the other hand, that same clarity just seems so accessible and so easy from my new vantage point — so much so that it made my lack of that clarity for the past four years seem all the stranger and more artificial. For all that time when I would wonder — with no earthly clue — how these four years will shape up or what I’ll be like at the end of it, now I am here with a story arc of such shocking and, again, frightening lucidity that it makes me wonder why I ever thought things could have turned out any other way.

About four years ago, I was in a small, secluded Buddhist temple set on the side of a mountain — so small, in fact, that I was a bit surprised when a monk came in from the back of the temple to greet me, and asked me if he could help me with anything. So I told him that I was feeling nervous and uncertain about starting college in a few months. And I was nervous — about all those classic doubts incoming frosh have: Who am I? What should I be doing? Where do I fit in at this school? But even though I desperately wanted answers to these questions, I was also dubious as to how this person, who doesn’t know me at all, could answer questions about me that I myself couldn’t answer. What was this guy going to say? Will he just offer me some kind of generic platitude? Or maybe he will he find out where I was going to college and tell me to cash in and do CS? After all, these were the responses I was used to.

What happened next I will never be able to forget, because he just nodded and walked me over to the prayer mat in front of the statue of the Buddha, and sat me down with him, and said:

“So, if you’re starting college, you must be pretty nervous and stressed, no?”

I nodded.

He smiled and proceeded to teach me breathing exercises that he has found to calm his nerves.

I was stunned — stunned because he hadn’t tried to ask me (like everyone else) what I wanted to do in college, or what I hoped to gain out of it or where I would  like to see myself after. He showed me how to actually take the steps ahead on my journey, and how to condition myself as I endeavored to learn and grow, rather than worry about some destination that, in the midst of the mountains, I could not see.

It sounds risky to simply go forth without knowing where it might take us, but the risks are an inherent part of this particular journey. In fact, I have no doubt that it was the mistakes I made, the failures I experienced and the detours I took in the past four years made me who I am today. And, as archetypal as the coming-of-age experience may be, everyone will still have their own particular set of mistakes, failures and detours to learn from. They’re obstacles that we can’t run away from or ask other people to overcome for us. They are there for us to learn and grow along the path that we make for ourselves as we steadily ascend towards the beautiful view that awaits each of us at the mountaintop — a view that is so unimaginable beforehand, and yet feels so beautifully natural and clear when we finally get there.

Until then, the best advice I have may be from that monk in the little temple on the mountainside: Take a deep breath.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Hoover must re-evaluate the academic merit of its fellows https://stanforddaily.com/2019/03/01/me-ll-hoover-must-re-evaluate-the-academic-merit-of-its-fellows/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/03/01/me-ll-hoover-must-re-evaluate-the-academic-merit-of-its-fellows/#respond Fri, 01 Mar 2019 09:00:03 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1150551 Stanford is renowned for being the home of some of the world’s most brilliant minds, and these minds are undoubtedly one of this university’s greatest assets. As students here, we often witness firsthand the unrivaled intellectual caliber of our professors, and, less often but still occasionally, the difficulty of obtaining and keeping those professorial positions here. We also hear of cases where top-notch scholars don’t receive tenure, a fate shared by half of all the assistant professors here.

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Stanford is renowned for being the home of some of the world’s most brilliant minds, and these minds are undoubtedly one of the University’s greatest assets. As students here, we often witness firsthand the unrivaled intellectual caliber of our professors, and, less often but still occasionally, the difficulty of obtaining and keeping those professorial positions here. We also hear of cases where top-notch scholars don’t receive tenure, a fate shared by half of all the assistant professors here.

Compared to the world-class faculty we find in other parts of the University — and the stringent processes by which they are selected to be here — some of the folks the Hoover Institution has among its ranks ought to raise eyebrows. In a Feb. 8 op-ed, a group of distinguished professors stated that their main objection towards the Hoover “is a matter of the mission of the Hoover potentially conflicting with the mission of Stanford University, or indeed, any university.” While this particular op-ed criticizes Hoover’s ideological bias, I think we can look to something even more fundamental: the University’s mission as a place for teaching, learning and the pursuit of knowledge.

If Hoover is truly committed to this goal, it has a funny way of showing it with some of its hires. Indeed, while it certainly also has its fair share of brilliant Stanford scholars, Hoover houses figures whose presence at this institution seems baffling, and whose relationships with the advancement of learning and knowledge are dubious at best.

For starters, not all of Hoover’s fellows are who we might consider scholars or academics, which is itself not a problem at all: Many academic departments and programs here will hire professionals in their respective industries as teachers and researchers, and the field of politics is no exception. However, in the same way that we expect our professors to be some of the world’s most brilliant academics, these non-academics are also supposed to be the top of their respective fields.

Not so at Hoover. To paraphrase President Trump, a man some at Hoover seem all too happy to defend: Oftentimes, when Hoover sends its people, they’re not sending their best. Hoover fellows are convicted felons, racists who call President Obama things like “ghetto boy” and “grown-up Trayvon,” and tweet hashtags like “#BurnTheJews” — and that’s just Dinesh D’Souza (who, yes, was once a Hoover fellow).

As much as certain Hoover fellows have mocked millennials as “crybabies” and decried the “participation trophy,” it is ironic that Hoover may be the biggest participation trophy of them all for failed conservatives who, even after their failed careers have finally come to an inglorious end, can still expect to find a safe space at Hoover. Stanford’s reputation is strong, and being able to claim an affiliation with Stanford like this confers a great deal of social capital, legitimacy and prestige. Conferring these things on folks whose success in their fields is debatable at best is highly questionable, and it points to why the Hoover’s practices are so problematic and antithetical to the values of a University that seeks to gather the best and brightest minds. It is not simply that Hoover is disliked for being conservative or hiring conservatives: It is disliked because it provides free passes to conservatives with dubious records who are not up to par.

For example, what exactly makes former California governor Pete Wilson qualified to be at Stanford? His deregulation of the state’s energy grid arguably single-handedly caused one of the biggest and longest power outages in American history, and his divisive policies on immigration made the California GOP a permanent minority party in a previously reliable red state.

What exactly makes former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne qualified to be at Stanford? His austerity policies have now put one in three British children in grinding poverty, and have created an economic situation so bad that even The New York Times, hardly a hotbed of Marxist thought, had to put out a front-page story about how these conditions have driven young Britons towards socialism.

And, of course, what exactly makes Henry Kissinger, called “a war criminal whose offenses rival those of the most heinous dictators in recent history” by none other than a fellow colleague at the Hoover, qualified to be at Stanford? His disastrous foray into foreign policy included championing a secret, never-authorized bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War that killed upwards of a half million people; support for the Pakistani genocide of up to three million people during the Bangladesh Liberation War; and deposition of democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende and subsequent installation of brutal tyrant Augusto Pinochet.

This is not a matter of ideology — it’s about merit. People like Wilson and Osborne are not academics; they are politicians and policymakers, and their merits and deservedness to be at Hoover need to be based on their records in those capacities (in the same way that a professor up for tenure should have that decision be based on their ability to teach and do good research), and frankly, their records just aren’t up to par, even by conservative standards. For example, even conservatives can’t deny the cold hard fact that Pete Wilson became governor in a red state but left it a blue one: Since Wilson’s departure, the GOP has never held majorities in the state house, and has won an electoral majority on just one statewide office (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial reelection bid) in two decades.

And the disparity is stark: Whereas most of the University will only hire the best and brightest — whether they be academics or industry professionals — to share this intellectual space, the Hoover is instead allowed to bring in some of the worst-regarded men (and it is, for the most part, just men: Women make up just eight percent of Hoover’s fellows) in politics in living memory. Frankly, there are just better, more effective political figures out there, both on the left and right. Among Hoover’s own ranks, George Schultz and HR McMaster, both Republicans, and Michael McFaul, a Democrat, are just some among many people at Hoover with whom I and many others might not necessarily agree, but who — I imagine almost all can agree — are nonetheless competent, successful public servants.

So why, then, is Hoover hiring and retaining these people? If what we want are successful, real-life policymakers who can teach their experiences, these folks certainly aren’t it. I suppose one reason might be that there is still plenty to be learned from failed experiences in public policy — which is certainly true. However, if this is the goal, these folks, again, aren’t it, because they have not examined their legacies in an honest, fair-handed way, nor have they recognized their failures. Osborne still steadfastly defends his austerity policies. Wilson says that he still supports Prop. 187, the unconstitutional, anti-immigrant law he championed, even as the pushback from the law has sent the California GOP into third-party status in a state that only has two major political parties. If the goal is to learn from the mistakes of the past, it would be pretty strange to try to do it from people who refuse to even acknowledge them.

It is the rest of Stanford and, importantly, the rest of Hoover, that foots the metaphorical bill. Because again, this is by no means a blanket statement on the Hoover as a whole. There is no shortage of smart people and good people at the Hoover, and they deserve their fair share of recognition just like any other brilliant scholars on campus. But they must also realize that their less-than-stellar colleagues at the Hoover are making that recognition difficult to come by. In other words, by inviting these devastatingly unqualified people on as so-called fellows, the Hoover is making itself and the entire campus look worse and is doing a great disservice to its fellows who actually do research and students at Stanford who actually want to learn. As much as each individual at Hoover deserves to be judged on their own merits, the reputation of the institution they belong to matters. And until the Hoover can wean itself of its habit of hiring its conservative friends who are not qualified to be there, that reputation will remain quite sordid indeed.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Xenophobia is back https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/07/xenophobia-is-back/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/02/07/xenophobia-is-back/#respond Thu, 07 Feb 2019 09:00:19 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1149310 This morning, I was sent an innocuous-looking op-ed in the Stanford Review from more than a week ago, entitled “How China Leverages Stanford’s Expertise in Artificial Intelligence.” With a title like that, I expected the piece to be about some specific, concrete incidents of tech transfers or even thefts (like this Daily piece on Huawei, […]

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This morning, I was sent an innocuous-looking op-ed in the Stanford Review from more than a week ago, entitled “How China Leverages Stanford’s Expertise in Artificial Intelligence.” With a title like that, I expected the piece to be about some specific, concrete incidents of tech transfers or even thefts (like this Daily piece on Huawei, for example). I was shocked by what I found instead: a piece that accuses “U.S. technological education centers” of “aiding Chinese governmental oppression” by way of Chinese international students returning home, labels these students in the US a “national security risk,” and compares teaching them to training nuclear engineers for the Kremlin during the Cold War.

To start, I want to note that it is important to talk about concrete cases of US-China disputes with regards to technology, patents, trade practices and espionage and how they relate to Stanford, especially in an era when US-China relations have become noticeably more tense. However, this Review article mentions no such specifics. Instead, it collectively labels all of the more than 350,000 Chinese nationals currently studying in US universities a security risk based on no evidence whatsoever; if that is not discrimination based on national origin, I do not know what is. I can’t vouch for the innocence of all 350,000 of these students any more than the author of the article can presume their guilt based on, again, no specific evidence. And, frankly, given that our legal system presumes innocence until proven otherwise, I would argue my way feels far more American.

I do find it interesting and ironic that the author would bring up nuclear engineering, because while American universities did not train nuclear scientists for the USSR, there is one country that it did do that for: China. The father of the Chinese nuclear program, H.S. Tsien, was originally a professor at Caltech when the fever of McCarthyism infected the United States. Tsien was under investigation starting in the early 1940s, culminating in his application for naturalization being denied and his security clearance being revoked, even as the rest of his extended family was naturalized. One of his nephews, Roger, was a professor at UCSD and was winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; another nephew, Richard, was the director of the Brain Research Center at Stanford and now teaches at NYU; their father, H.C., was the chief engineer at Boeing.

H.S. Tsien, meanwhile, was unable to continue his research without clearance, and moved back to China after a disgraceful 5-year house arrest, during which he also had to fight trumped-up charges of espionage. As then head of the US Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball put it, “[forcing Tsien out] was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go.”

And stupid it was.

Tsien arrived in China in 1955 and became the so-called “father of Chinese rocketry.” Within ten years, China became a nuclear power. He also lived to see, in 2003, the first Chinese taikonaut in space, propelled there by a rocket based on his designs.

I don’t want to give the impression that Tsien has been the only scientist of Asian descent to have their life and career destroyed by false espionage charges. Rather, these false espionage charges represents a sadly familiar pattern of perceptions of “yellow peril.” Just a few years ago in 2015, Professor Xiaoxing Xi, the Chair of the Physics department at Temple University, was arrested and accused of giving restricted technology to China, only for those charges to be proven false by his colleagues less than four months later (Xi’s daughter, Joyce, actually came to Stanford to speak on several occasions). It was a case that drew parallels with that of Professor Wen Ho Lee, who received $1.6 million in damages (and an extraordinarily long apology from the judge and admissions of fault by then president Bill Clinton) after being false jailed based on charges of espionage. The secrets that Lee was falsely charged with stealing were, ironically, pertaining to US nuclear technology, even though nothing has done more to advance Chinese nuclear technology than that act of xenophobic paranoia against H.S. Tsien all those decades ago; and, more importantly, this pattern of false accusations of espionage that is apparently still being perpetuated today shows that we have learned nothing from “the stupidest thing” this country has ever done in all those decades.

What xenophobes and bigots never seem to understand is that the biggest threat to America isn’t whatever Other they’ve chosen to demonize for the day — it is themselves. H.S. Tsien did not leave the United States because he was a spy. He left because he was forced out by a xenophobic and paranoid McCarthyism that is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to the values of openness, diversity and pluralism that this country was supposed to stand for — values for which so many immigrants who have built this country up to become what it is today believed it stands for when they came.

America has been a welcome refuge and destination for people from all parts of the world because of the diversity and pluralism that it has been able to foster. This is not only what has made this country strong, it has defined our values and our national identity — an identity that the xenophobic grumblings of people like the author of this piece severely undermines. The “yellow peril” stereotype may be centuries old, but the pain felt by people of Chinese descent in America is constantly renewed. In an environment like this, it should not be surprising why people are still coming to the US for travel or to get educated, but not to stay or settle. And, at the end of the day, why would anyone want to stay in a place where they will be accused as being hostile foreign agents for no reason?

The author of the Review article points to “the rapid drop in the percentage of [Chinese] students staying stateside after graduation” as “cause for concern,” and further accused the Chinese government of being “odious.” I can only hope that he would consider the possibility that maybe folks aren’t staying because they don’t feel welcome in a country where people like him feel emboldened to categorically accuse entire groups of people of being foreign spies without so much as a shred of actual evidence. That, I would argue, is pretty odious too.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Just come out and say it, admin https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/31/just-come-out-and-say-it-admin/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/31/just-come-out-and-say-it-admin/#respond Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:00:55 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148955 If you haven’t heard by now, the University reversed its decision to take away TDX’s house just eight days after first announcing it. To say this is an unexpected turn of events is an understatement. After the initial revocation of TDX’s housing, I had written a piece defending TDX and Greek life in general (not […]

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If you haven’t heard by now, the University reversed its decision to take away TDX’s house just eight days after first announcing it.

To say this is an unexpected turn of events is an understatement. After the initial revocation of TDX’s housing, I had written a piece defending TDX and Greek life in general (not the most original of takes, I’ll admit) only to have to scrap it when this decision was announced. This is such an absurd turn of events that the headline, “TDX housing restored after University discovers ‘procedural flaw’ in SOE guidelines” is virtually unparodiable. Admin has turned into the hook, butt and punchline of a joke entirely of its own making. It’s a self-destruct sequence so excruciating that I imagine even folks who don’t particularly like admin must at least feel some degree of pity, if not sympathy. After all, you really don’t hear stories about university officials being forced to apologize to frats all that often.

And, of course, it doesn’t help that they cited perhaps the dumbest possible reason to explain all this: procedural errors.

Like, sure, Jan.

“Procedural errors” is a terrible reason to cite because it sounds like a lie meant to cover something else up (just like when administrators cited the very similar-sounding “administrative misstep” to explain why they reversed the decision to revoke the Outdoor House’s theme two days after they initially announced it, and it sounded like a lie meant to cover something up). What happened behind the scenes for TDX? Did some wealthy alumnus make a call? Did aliens scramble an administrator’s brain to make them more benevolent? We can only speculate, and we may never know.

But what I do know is that if this “procedural error” is the actual reason, then the situation is arguably worse. Admin claims that the “procedural error” is that it determined TDX’s fate based on a curved grade, as opposed to its raw grade, which was actually acceptable enough for them to keep their house. But, if this is true, then the question must be asked: Why on Earth would Greek organizations be graded on a curve?

TDX leadership characterized the process of attempting to meet the University’s requirements as trying to hit a “moving target.” If they really were being graded on a curve, that statement would literally be true. After all, being students, we have taken one-too-many tests to not know what grading on a curve does. The goal is to create an even distribution of grades such that there will always be people getting high grades even if no one scored high and always people getting low grades even if everyone scored relatively high. Grading on a curve is, by definition, a system meant to produce bad or failing grades, even if no one has failed in terms of raw score. If the administrators’ goal was, in fact, to merely regulate the conduct of Greek organizations and make sure they meet certain standards of propriety, why would they grade the organizations with a grading system that would, by definition, give a poor grade to at least one organization even if all of them have met the standards? In other words, organizations have either conducted themselves in a way deserving to be on campus or they have not, and if a Greek organization has met those standards, what difference does it make how it stacks up against other ones?

And, as most crafty students know with regards to their classes, curves are most often used in large introductory classes to weed out students by issuing them less-than-stellar grades. Are administrators trying to do the same with Greek life, weeding them out with the curve one by one? Perceptions that administrators are attempting to end Stanford Greek life as we know it are aplenty. By admitting that they grade on a curve, administrators have arguably bolstered suspicions that this is indeed the case.

And if it is indeed the will of administrators to end Greek life — or, at least, residential Greek life — on campus, it might be most advantageous at this point for them to come out and say it.

It might obviously generate some intense pushback, but is the present situation actually any better? Banning Greek life is potentially defensible, by which I mean there are decades of precedent from other colleges and universities doing exactly that based on sound reasoning and well-researched arguments. If the University were to similarly put forth a clear, transparent plan for Greek life that details their reasoning, the reception might be better than they expect.

I’m not saying myself or anyone else will necessarily agree with admin should they choose to do this — but I do know that students aren’t irrational; if they are offered a sensible plan based on legitimate rationales that will concretely improve the campus (as opposed to weird, arcane bureaucratic maneuvering), they will listen. Then, at least there will be a better chance for a genuine and productive conversation about the role of Greek life on campus, and there will certainly be a smaller chance of gaffes where administrators are forced to apologize due to “procedural flaws.”

You build consensus with honest, open talk about concrete and transparent policies. You can’t build consensus around unstated goals achieved through bureaucratic sorcery. If Stanford wants to ban Greek life, it should come out and say it so we can have an open, honest conversation about that. And if it doesn’t, then it really does seem that the Stanford bureaucracy needs to get a grip and get better at doing bureaucracy, even if it’s just for their own dignity’s sake.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Reviewing the Review https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/14/me-asl-reviewing-the-review/ https://stanforddaily.com/2019/01/14/me-asl-reviewing-the-review/#respond Mon, 14 Jan 2019 09:00:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1148205 If someone had told me during my freshman year that I would end up writing an article in partial support of The Stanford Review, I would be surprised — and probably somewhat angry. Let me explain. I came into Stanford during a politically quiet year, sandwiched between the height of the Black Lives Matter movement […]

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If someone had told me during my freshman year that I would end up writing an article in partial support of The Stanford Review, I would be surprised — and probably somewhat angry.

Let me explain.

I came into Stanford during a politically quiet year, sandwiched between the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of Donald Trump. During that blissfully serene year, the only significant political turmoil on campus came when the Review dropped a particularly egregious article. For example, this one, arguing that students who help register folks to vote should instead work minimum wage jobs and send all proceeds to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to purchase mosquito nets. No, I’m not kidding.

Of course, there have always been suspicions that the Review was being wrong on purpose — at least some of the time — just to get attention. I, for one, get the feeling that certain Review articles from a few years ago were written to create controversy for controversy’s sake, and I feel like I was rightly peeved about them at the time. I certainly have not warmed to conservative ideas since I came to Stanford — arguably, the precise opposite has happened. However, since the Stanford College Republicans has assumed the role of campus’ primary conservative provocateur, I can’t help but revisit my feelings toward the Review because of how much worse things have become.

Whatever intentions these Review pieces may have been born out of, at the end of the day, they were about some issue of importance in the day. When the Review put out an article on, say, the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock protests, it was making arguments on real policy, whether national or campus-related. These are arguments that could be researched, debated, and ones that other folks could respond to, as I did in that particular instance. And in consuming these articles, at least some of the readers will stand to learn something about the issues being talked about — as I did in researching and writing them.

Meanwhile, if there is one thing that unites the many, many, many garbage fires that the College Republicans have started around here just in the span of the past four quarters, it is how vacant of substance the group is after you get past all the drama. The College Republicans are both the instigator and the victim of all of its controversies. It is both the brave maverick in inviting a controversial speaker, but also the injured victim when that invitation is inevitably questioned in any way. The archetypal College Republicans controversy is like a Tommy Wiseau film: self-written, self-directed, self-produced and self-acted. And, as a result, whereas before, we could be arguing with the Review about DAPL, we now find ourselves arguing with the College Republicans about … the College Republicans. They’ve grabbed the spotlight of campus discourse, but in doing so, they’ve edged out actual topics that are of far more substance.

I’m not here to drum up nostalgia for a bygone era of civility and discourse that never existed because the Review was, even in terms of its disposition, not good. For example, it ran a so-called “April Fool’s joke” in 2016 “[demanding] that Stanford builds a wall around El Centro Chicano, and makes MEChA pay for it” — a stunt that is very reminiscent of something the College Republicans might do today.

But, perhaps precisely as the College Republicans assumed ownership of that style of vile stunts and took them to new, death threat-inducing heights, the Review, especially under the latest editor, seems to have gone in a different direction. And as it received less attention with the ascendance of the College Republicans, the Review arguably has gotten better.

“Gotten better” is a weird phrase to use here because, in many respects, the Review is as it has always been in the past. It continues to give conservative groups (including the College Republicans) an unearned platform for their drivel in the publication. And, of course, it continues to publish plenty of articles that are, in my view, simply wrong (see: “Why Women Can (and Should) Support Brett Kavanaugh”).

But, as someone on the left, I’m supposed to find the viewpoints expressed in a conservative magazine to be incorrect. It is perfectly natural for me to disagree with their articles, as I’m sure they will disagree with many of mine. A difference of opinions is not bad; it is, in fact, healthy. And, in its past editorship, the Review has managed to be just that — a healthy conservative voice on campus, healthy in that it is able to express its worldview without any cringeworthy stunts or antics (which, during this time, was the exclusive domain of the College Republicans).

So, as disappointed as my past self may be, I must extend some recognition to the Review in this regard. The surface reason is that the bar is, frankly, not very high. As I’ve said time and time again in this article, the Review is not good; but, the fact that it is not actively engaged in the destruction of basic human decency is (sadly) refreshing.

The Review of today also goes to show that divided politics do not necessarily have to manifest themselves in the ugly forms that we’ve unfortunately seen too much of on this campus. It shows that if we could get past provocateurs who would pull any stunt for attention, we could build a better campus political discourse where we could all say our piece, and still get along afterwards.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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What happened with Donohue? https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/24/me-asl-what-happened-with-donohue/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/24/me-asl-what-happened-with-donohue/#respond Wed, 24 Oct 2018 08:00:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1145534 Around three weeks ago, the Fountain Hopper reported that Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue shouted the racial slur “chink” during an altercation arising from a basketball game. The Daily quickly followed suit, reporting an account that differed significantly from that of the FoHo which, most notably, did not include the usage of any racial […]

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Around three weeks ago, the Fountain Hopper reported that Stanford Law School Professor John Donohue shouted the racial slur “chink” during an altercation arising from a basketball game. The Daily quickly followed suit, reporting an account that differed significantly from that of the FoHo which, most notably, did not include the usage of any racial slur.

However, since that initial flurry of conflicting reports, we have heard absolutely nothing on the matter from anyone for the past three weeks, least of all anything resembling a reasonably certain recounting of what actually happened.

On the one hand, one could view the incident as another juicy piece of campus gossip — as the FoHo seemed to have — and focus on the did-he-or-didn’t-he portion of this saga. However, I think that doing so understates the gravity of the situation at hand, which extends significantly further than the reputation of one man.

Professor Donohue — by no fault of his own — is part of an educational institution and system that can be deeply hostile for students from marginalized backgrounds, who must carefully navigate to figure out who they can confide in, who they can expect understanding and sympathy from and, most importantly, who can be expected to treat them fairly and without prejudice.

Seldom are these questions answered with the kind of verifiable evidence that is admissible in court; rather, they are answered with such things as rumors, whispered knowledge from upperclassmen, tidbits grasped from old course reviews and, unfortunately, disputed accounts from the Fountain Hopper. And yet, the answers to these questions are also incredibly important because they determine who to request to be an advisor, who to ask to write a letter of recommendation or who to take a class with.

And right now, I cannot say that I would be fully comfortable taking a class with Professor Donohue.

This is not an easy sentiment for me to convey without implying that I believe the FoHo and that I believe Donohue did, in fact, shout racial slurs when, in reality, I believe neither of those things. And, given the available evidence, I would even agree that he probably didn’t.

But, the problem is that “probably” is not good enough of an answer when it comes to racism. I have been called that ugly word — “chink” — before on many an occasion, and if I want to be sure to avoid being called it again, “probably not racist” will not be sufficient. It would be asking too much of me or anybody else to not err on the side of caution and simply take the risk on a professor being “probably not racist,” especially when vague rumors and probabilities about who might be problematic or not are all we ever work with.

By making its allegations, the FoHo not only undermined the personal reputation of Donohue, it also undermined many students’ faith in the assumption that they would be treated with dignity and fairness by him and, by extension, any other member of the Stanford faculty.

This perception is, incidentally, not helped by the fact that Donohue threatened the person with whom he had an altercation with the possibility of “deportation despite not knowing the individual’s name or citizenship status.” Admittedly, this is a minor point in the grand scheme of things, but in another sense, it highlights the degree of power Donohue has by virtue of his position and why students have an inherent interest in knowledge that will inform of his biases and his partiality.

This is what makes the prolonged silence after the initial incident so problematic. It should be neither novel nor controversial that students should be entitled to know whether their professor is someone who shouts racial slurs at people.

Surely, that answer is available somewhere. If nothing else, one of the few points that the Daily and FoHo reports agree on is that a University investigation was launched on the matter, and I strongly urge the University to share the results of those findings to offer some much-needed clarity on this matter.

Shortly after the incident, my fellow columnist Chapman Caddell declared that “the FoHo let us down.” Indeed, the FoHo’s brash, sensationalistic reporting on this incident leaves much to be desired; and if the allegations of racial slurs do turn out to be false, the FoHo must be held accountable because the gravity of the situation demands it.

In the meantime, however, we are still no closer to knowing what really happened after three long weeks, and that means it’s not just the FoHo who has let us down.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The silent crisis https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/10/me-asl-the-silent-crisis/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/10/10/me-asl-the-silent-crisis/#respond Wed, 10 Oct 2018 08:00:51 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144623 I had the privilege of being a speaker at Faces during this year’s NSO. My speech was on mental health issues and, more specifically, my own stories of dealing with them. A few days later, I was approached by Susie Brubaker-Cole, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs. She was effusive with her praise and gushed […]

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I had the privilege of being a speaker at Faces during this year’s NSO. My speech was on mental health issues and, more specifically, my own stories of dealing with them.

A few days later, I was approached by Susie Brubaker-Cole, the Vice Provost for Student Affairs. She was effusive with her praise and gushed about the many, many frosh who found my speech so relatable. I just nodded along politely and smiled, accepting the compliment I’m sure she intended to convey.

But the problem was that I wasn’t at all pleased that people liked my speech because they thought it was relatable, or that it spoke to them, or that it reminded them of their experiences or however else one would phrase it. In a perfect world, I would much prefer that nobody find my narrative relatable. The experiences I went through were, to put it mildly, deeply unpleasant, and if given the choice, I’d rather have no one resonate with that unpleasantness. But Vice Provost Brubaker-Cole was right. Standing up there on that stage, I could see with my very own eyes how many people seemed to be identifying with my story.

And it was devastating.

Mental illness shouldn’t be as common as the common cold. This isn’t normal, and we shouldn’t continue to normalize it. At some point, we need to come to the recognition that there is something deeply wrong at this campus and with the system that creates and sustains it. There is something wrong when stress and overwork become such a norm that people have trouble keeping commitments and meetings, that we feel compelled to give the phenomenon a name: duck syndrome. There is something wrong when the imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy are so prevalent that frosh have to be reassured that their admission wasn’t a mistake.

And the problem isn’t confined to Stanford — as much as we’d like to blame it on our academic culture, or the mechanics of the 10-week quarter or even some intrinsic quality of being a Stanford student. Studies show that as many as one in five Americans already experience depression during adolescence, yet the kind of response that we would expect to be forthcoming in an epidemic of such scale seems to be neither expected nor forthcoming.

In this regard, the Stanford administration is arguably complicit in the continuation of this crisis, especially given its less-than-stellar record in handling mental illness among students. However, these issues are also far more systemic, and an effective response to the problem would go beyond the role of the University.

I spoke at Faces because I believe in having open and honest conversations around mental health — and a big part of why these conversations are beneficial is that it allows for those who do suffer to see that they are not alone. I am happy if I was able to do that for people. But conversations can only be the first step. We could continue supporting the courage of individuals who can step forward and share their narratives in the hopes that it could empower others who hear them. But no matter how powerful, heartwarming or impactful these stories can be, they will only serve to highlight the alarmingly large number of folks who relate to them.

What Stanford really needs is a conversation about the causes. Why is it that so many people in our society are being affected by mental health issues? Why is suffering normalized? How are our institutional structures contributing to suffering, and what can be done to make them better?

These are questions I do not have answers to. At the end of the day, I have only my story to share. But I hope somehow, by doing that, we could one day be closer to those answers.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Serra renaming is too little, too late https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/28/me-asl-serra-renaming-is-too-little-too-late/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/09/28/me-asl-serra-renaming-is-too-little-too-late/#respond Fri, 28 Sep 2018 12:00:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1144050 We arrived at Stanford to the news that the administration has finally saw fit to rename some of Stanford’s landmarks currently named after Junipero Serra, noted colonizer and perpetrator of genocide. Many are undoubtedly thrilled by this outcome. I am not. Don’t get me wrong. I do think it is good that Serra (the dorm) […]

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We arrived at Stanford to the news that the administration has finally saw fit to rename some of Stanford’s landmarks currently named after Junipero Serra, noted colonizer and perpetrator of genocide. Many are undoubtedly thrilled by this outcome. I am not.

Don’t get me wrong. I do think it is good that Serra (the dorm) and Serra (the home of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research) and Serra Mall (the home of the University’s official mailing address) will soon no longer bear that name. But just because something is good doesn’t mean it’s good enough, and this result is not good enough.

In order to show why the renaming process has left much to be desired, I simply ask you to think back to when the process first started. Do you remember?

Because I sure don’t. In fact, if you are a student on campus right now, it is significantly more likely than not that you weren’t even here when the renaming process began. It was only after digging around The Daily’s archives that I found that the process actually began all the way back in February of 2016 – the winter quarter of my freshman year, when the ASSU passed a resolution asking the University to rename landmarks named after Serra.

And now, almost three years later, I am a senior who will soon graduate, and the new names for the two Serra houses are still nowhere in sight.

To show just how ridiculously slow the renaming process has been, consider a similar effort that took place right next door in the Palo Alto Unified School District. On December 7, 2015, the parent of a seventh-grader started a petition online to rename two schools that had then been named after David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman, after said seventh-grader’s school project revealed that both men were vile racists and eugenicists who supported the ethnic cleansing of racial minorities in America. Within two months, the school board voted to enjoin a committee to review the names of all of the district’s schools on February 10 – the same exact day that our own ASSU passed their resolution.

And yet, despite having the same start date, the Palo Alto school board moved at a decidedly faster pace, voting to rename the two middle schools on March 17, 2017, just over a year after the committee had been formed. The entire process, which started from a seventh-grader’s research project and worked its way through myriad layers of bureaucracy and a maze of stakeholders, took just 16 months. And by the beginning of their 2018-19 school year a few weeks ago, Palo Alto middle-schoolers got to attend Frank S. Greene, Jr. and Ellen Fletcher Middle Schools.

Meanwhile, we returned to school for the 2018-19 school year more than 31 months into the process, with (and I can’t stress this enough) the new names for the two Serra houses still nowhere in sight.

This story from Palo Alto matters more than just because of the poignant contrast in speed of action. It also matters because names like David Starr Jordan are intimately familiar to us at Stanford, as it is the namesake of Jordan Hall (which I strongly recommend be referred to only as Building 420). And if Jordan’s is not a name that reflects the values of a public middle school, then it is certainly not a name that reflects the values of one of the finest universities in the world.

Somehow, I have a hunch that even if the names Terman and Jordan were to be removed from Stanford’s campus, it would take significantly longer than 16 months.

One of the widely recognized challenges of campus activism is how transitive a university’s student body is. Most folks are only here for a few years before they graduate and that gives administrators the ability to oppose activists by doing nothing and simply waiting them out. Whether this is what Stanford intended to do all along with the elongated renaming process is beside the point. Either way, as it currently stands, the hard work of countless Stanford activists apparently have less sway than the class project of a seventh-grader. Whether purposeful or not, Stanford’s tedious renaming process has outlasted many a graduating student activist and that makes activism incredibly unsustainable which makes change unnecessarily difficult.

I’m not advocating that the process be rushed, but it should not take the entirety of my undergraduate career for a committee composed of the most brilliant people on Earth to figure out that we shouldn’t have a building named after a guy who advocated for the forced sterilization of racial minorities.

 

Update: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the namesake of Terman Fountain. EJ Miranda, the University spokesperson, has written to inform me that the Terman Fountain is actually named after Fred Terman, the Electric Engineering Professor and not Lewis Terman, the eugenicist (you know, in the same way that Junipero the dorm is not technically named after the tree and not Junipero Serra). I apologize for this error and rescind my suggestion that Terman Fountain be renamed like Jordan Hall, although my criticisms of Lewis stand.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Notes from the battleground https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/06/notes-from-the-battleground/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/06/06/notes-from-the-battleground/#respond Wed, 06 Jun 2018 12:00:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1142018 The title of my last column was “Stanford is not your battleground.” Given the revelations since then — which culminated in a series of leaked emails in which the president of Stanford College Republicans (SCR) proclaimed: “slowly, we will continue to crush the Left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure,” while Professor […]

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The title of my last column was “Stanford is not your battleground.” Given the revelations since then — which culminated in a series of leaked emails in which the president of Stanford College Republicans (SCR) proclaimed: “slowly, we will continue to crush the Left’s will to resist, as they will crack under pressure,” while Professor Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution replied by suggesting to spy on a student — I think it is safe to say that particular title has become more than moot, because a battleground is precisely what these people — with insane phrases like “a famous victory” and “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” — apparently view Stanford to be.

So, if this has to be a battleground, it might be worthwhile to examine the battles that have been waged here, just within the past year. Because much like the presidency, this year has been so packed with the antics of far right disruptors that it’s almost impossible to keep track. But this makes it all the more necessary to run down the full slate of insanity we’ve had to live through since the year began.

In November, SCR graced us with a visit by noted Islamophobe Robert Spencer, who is so toxic that he was banned from entry to  the UK because his very presence was hilariously deemed “not conducive to the public good.” This came shortly after Spencer featured photos of students speaking out against him on his website Jihad Watch (because, presumably, these students were Jihadis and needed to be watched) and called them “fascists.” SCR members also lied about being assaulted by protesters,  while protesters actually were assaulted by attendees. Despite the clear reasons why Spencer’s presence would endanger student safety and well-being (case in point, over $4,300 of your student money was spent on security measures alone), Stanford did nothing to interfere.

Then, after an unfortunately short break, the SCR’s president (whose name I will continue to not mention) authored a lie-filled article in the Stanford Review in January about Professor David Palumbo-Liu, which generated death threats against him and his family. Despite the clearly false nature of the accusations that began the controversy, Stanford did not stand by Professor Palumbo-Liu or state that these allegations were false, and failed to protect his safety.

Then, in February (Black History Month, mind you), Stanford’s Cardinal Conversations program (led by the same aforementioned group of conservatives trying to spy on our fellow students) invited Charles Murray, a peddler of pseudoscience who has claimed a relationship between race and intelligence. Stanford’s administration was not only sponsoring this event, but did not condemn these aspects of Murray’s views despite students’ requests.

Then, in March and April, there was a concerted effort by the aforementioned unnamed student to elect, under false pretenses, a slate affiliated with the conservative organization Turning Point USA, whose stated mission on Stanford’s campus includes defunding student organizations it considers “progressive” and using the money to fund right-wing propaganda against student wishes. In May, Turning Point USA reposted the same false article about Professor Palumbo-Liu that garnered him death threats and placed him on a “Professor Watchlist” in an attempt at further harassment of liberals on campus. Despite all this, Stanford has not only not taken action, but is apparently inviting TPUSA onto campus to form a chapter as an official student organization. Stanford has previously seemed to be hesitant about allowing a TPUSA chapter, but I can’t help notice that tone clearly changing after Fox News aired a segment called “Stanford is afraid of Conservatives coming on campus.”

In related news, SCR also invited TPUSA speaker Charlie Kirk to come to campus, and when it did not have the money to pay for the event, attempted to literally hijack another club and steal that club’s funds. Furthermore, SCR manually deleted the tickets of students registered to attend the speaker event, in clear violation of Stanford policy. It is also actively endorsing national candidates on social media despite Stanford’s policy being clearly against this. SCR has not been reprimanded by Stanford for any of these clear policy violations.

And all this happened before the latest twist in this apparently ongoing process to “slowly… crush the Left’s will to resist.” Indeed, it’s quite a lot. As one publication puts it, “this sh*t at Stanford is wild.”

Stanford’s reaction to each one of these incidents has been severely lackluster. And, taken together, these reactions can only be interpreted as one of two things: either Stanford is just as conservative as the SCR folks, and so doesn’t mind (or even likes) these antics, or it is too scared to take action against SCR for fear of the backlash.

I would hope, out of my love for Stanford, that it is not the first possibility. However, on some level, that kind of political disposition would be altogether befitting of a school that would allow the Hoover Institution a $65 million palace in prime real estate right adjacent to the Main Quad while choosing to house one of the world’s most comprehensive collection of Dr. Martin Luther King’s papers and the researchers that study them in a literal shack tucked behind a construction site half a mile from the center of campus.

To me, the second possibility is far more likely. After all, we all know that Stanford cares a great deal about its brand, and given the Trump-infused fervor of the right-wing media these days, I can imagine the kind of media hellstorm it will bring on Stanford should it sanction the SCR (see also: the Fox headline quoted earlier). But, there is a massive difference between what is popular with right-wing media and what is right, and the fact that an institution as powerful and influential as Stanford cannot stand up against the right to do what is right — whether it be protecting the safety of its own students and professors or, at the most basic level, enforcing its own policies on student organizations — is extremely disheartening. The administration seems to care more that Stanford is perceived a certain way, rather than doing anything to ensure that the actual political happenings on campus do not devolve into the horrid mess that it clearly has.

And that brings us back to the incident at hand. It is different than all the other prior incidents because for the first time, Stanford itself — in the form of one of its professors — has been implicated, and that is some truly thorny PR. Instead of a story about some amazing groundbreaking innovation™ or a cutesy feature on some Stanford students™ “working hard and playing hard,” America (and actually, the UK, too) woke up instead to learn that a Stanford professor is apparently trying to spy on his own students, and that a small clique of students are actively wreaking havoc on campus.

If there is one good thing that could come out of this, it is that the Stanford administration should at least recognize that it has played itself. Because for the negative PR, Stanford has no one to blame but itself. This could have been stopped — all of it could have been stopped. At every juncture of the insane political saga that this year has brought, Stanford could have stepped in and taken a stance against the SCR leadership, hell bent on creating ever-more-grievous chaos and discord on campus to the detriment of students. It did not. In every instance, it has sacrificed the safety and well-being of its students in service of some mythical brand appeal. I can only hope that this time, the negative impact of this incident on Stanford’s brand will finally match the negative consequences this entire mess has had on student life, because that, I fear, is the only time Stanford will ever act on any part of this ridiculous debacle.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford is not your battleground https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/22/stanford-is-not-your-battleground/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/22/stanford-is-not-your-battleground/#respond Tue, 22 May 2018 12:00:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1141355 A few months back, during ASSU campaign season, a curious email circulated, with a slate of candidates declaring that they “think that Stanford hasn’t exactly been the best in representing low-income, first generation students, and has misappropriated its funds towards places its students doesn’t want them to go.” They also said that “[the] ASSU seems […]

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A few months back, during ASSU campaign season, a curious email circulated, with a slate of candidates declaring that they “think that Stanford hasn’t exactly been the best in representing low-income, first generation students, and has misappropriated its funds towards places its students doesn’t want them to go.” They also said that “[the] ASSU seems to lack representation of the Student body.”

I didn’t look too much into the slate, but the email itself felt extremely weird because of how vague the wording was. It sounded almost like what would happen if an AI that was supposed to generate Bernie Sanders quotes never had its programming finished — or, like someone with no actual understanding of social justice or leftism trying to reproduce talking points they got down through rote memorization.

So, things made a lot more sense when the FoHo reported that slate to be part of some sort of project by right-wing organization Turning Point USA and a student (who I shall not name) to elect conservatives onto ASSU positions. And while some may doubt the veracity of things that the FoHo says, these claims appear to be credible. The candidate who sent out this email as part of the slate in question is a member of the Stanford College Republicans, and yet decided to run on some indisputably leftist slogans like “representing low-income, first generation students.” While neither of those things are objectionable, they do fit suspiciously well with a well-documented TPUSA strategy of disguising the conservative beliefs of candidates until they are elected. So, believe what you will.

Now, you might wonder: what is the point of all this? Why are right-wing millionaires funneling money into this national group that is in turn trying to contest elections that most students don’t really care about? Heck, we literally just decided an election based on which folks broke fewer campaign rules.

Well, according to a leaked strategy document from Turning Point USA itself, they are doing this so they can implement, through the student governments they capture, policies that include “defunding progressive organizations” on campuses, “block all Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) groups … and start Pro-America, Pro-Israel, and Free Market [sic] week-long events on [campuses],” and my favorite:

Using student resources to message American Exceptionalism and Free Market [sic] ideals on [campuses].”

Stanford, incidentally, is explicitly identified in this document as one of the “target” campuses.

On most college campuses in America, conservatives are in the minority, and Stanford is no exception. While there is no reliable data on how many conservatives there are on campus, a 2016 pre-election poll conducted by the Daily shows that only about 15% of the undergraduate student body identified as either conservative or libertarian. Stanford’s political climate is left-leaning because most of the student body is left-leaning. It is often strange to see people view college campuses as immutable bastions of leftism when, in fact, student bodies of universities are one of the most transitory demographics there are. Students come, students go, almost everyone leaves after a few years. The university is an ever-changing organism that reflects on the preferences of its student body. So, when conservatives attack the things that they think makes campuses “liberal”, they are actually attacking the choices the current students have made — the activities they choose to spend time in, the people they choose to associate with, and the clubs they choose to join. And instead of asking the difficult questions — why are young people predominantly liberal? Why is conservative ideology so odious and poorly-received among college students?— the Turning Point USA strategy is effectively an attack on students — trying to trick us into electing people who are against our interests, pulling funds from clubs and organizations we choose to take part in and forcing events and speakers we don’t want or need down our throats — and with our own money at that.

In some sense, this strategy is an admission of defeat in and of itself, because it shows that Turning Point USA are not at all interested in convincing anyone or to engage in substantive discussions about policy. Instead, it has chosen to trick the student body into voting for its candidates, and then using those elected puppets of theirs to forcibly “[use] student resources to message American Exceptionalism and Free Market ideals.” It is not free speech or critical discussion that they want. The goal, plain as day in this strategy document, is to rig the platform by funding its own messaging while defunding real student groups so that they can scream their dogma louder than any genuine, not-funded-by-outside group student voices.

The Turning Point USA strategy document I cited earlier is titled “Winning Back Our Universities.” So, I ask: winning back universities from what? This kind of rhetoric assumes that college students tend to be left-leaning because they have been brainwashed into it, never mind the fact that studies have shown that college actually broadens students’ political views. To assume that students lean left because they have been brainwashed or tricked is infantilizing and insulting to students’ intelligence and their ability to think for themselves; it is presumptuous, because it rejects the possibility that right-wing ideology could simply be unappealing (which it certainly is); but, most importantly, it is a classic case of psychological projection, because Turning Point USA is doing precisely that — trying to trick students into voting for conservatives.

There is not some massive left-wing plot to educate Marxists in America. The fact that Stanford is “liberal” is a product of each individual’s personal choice of political identification, and if the right wishes to respect individualism and choice, part of that respect must be to respect the present situation where the vast majority of Stanford students have openly, repeatedly, and vociferously rejected the ideology that TPUSA has attempted to preach.

Stanford is not your battleground.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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In defense of dining halls https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/in-defense-of-dining-halls/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/11/in-defense-of-dining-halls/#respond Fri, 11 May 2018 12:00:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1140886 Terence Zhao discusses how Stanford dining is, in many ways, pretty great.

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Once in a while, we get an article in a campus publication complaining about the food at the dining halls. And, I have to admit, after almost three years, I’m still a little taken aback every time I read one of them because, frankly, dining hall food isn’t bad at all.

I know that this is a fairly unpopular opinion. So, before this starts to feel like something that RD&E paid me to write, I will just say that I am by no means claiming that the dining halls are without flaw. The rice is almost never cooked right; the texture of the Arrillaga chicken remains absolutely inexplicable; I still hate the sadist who came up with the half-mushroom, half-beef burgers but not as much as I hate the other sadist who somehow managed to come up with beet hummus and made me accept it as a normal thing … I can go on like this for a while. But these are ultimately minor annoyances rather than major issues. But I feel like I assign greater significance than they warrant simply because they seem to be the only experiences that allow me to come even remotely close to rationalizing and making sense of folks’ criticisms of the dining halls.

And frankly, I mostly like dining hall food. My first encounter with it was during the summer of my sophomore year of high school when I had the privilege to be at Stanford for a summer humanities program and ate at Arrillaga for three weeks. Years after that, when I found out that I would be able to come back to Stanford, Arrillaga food was actually one of the things I looked forward to — a sentiment that seems to defy the very being of this campus.

But I’d like to think I have good reason to believe this. Without a doubt, I’ve never eaten as well in my life as I have at Stanford. Of course, I’ve had better meals at restaurants — but those only come so often; eating out every night is not a sustainable thing to do — or is it? I have no idea anymore. All I know is that as far as a long-term dining arrangement goes, I really can’t conceptualize a significantly better one. Maybe I feel that way because of the horror stories I’ve heard from other places (i.e. live insects in the salads), or maybe it’s because the nine years of grotesque, ketchup-counts-as-vegetables free and reduced-priced school lunches didn’t set the bar very high.

When I first came to Stanford, I was hyperaware of my class background in the context of such ubiquitous (and unfamiliar) privilege and wealth. So, like I did with many other things I saw, I viewed all the dining hall hate through the lens of class and classism. To an extent, I still do: To complain about what is often considered one of the best college dining programs in the country while 1 in 8 American households are hungry and 1 in 6 Americans do not have access to fresh produce really is the peak of privilege.

But that quickly proved to be surprisingly unsustainable because if that were the standard, we would not be able to complain about anything. And since we have to complain about something, Stanford Dining inevitably becomes a prime target for mockery: It’s something everyone is compelled into participating in, and it is bound to displease everybody at some point (incidentally, the exact same things can be said of PWR, and look how everybody enjoys that). It’s notoriously difficult in terms of sheer logistics to cook for large numbers of people. When combined with the fact that there’s always going to be people not particularly happy with the selection or is missing the food from their favorite restaurant/hometown/grandmother, I would actually argue it would be a minor miracle if there weren’t complaints about dining hall food. RD&E declares that dining halls “play a key role in this mission of community building” — which is true, in the most ironic sense imaginable, because they do so partly by allowing students from every walk of campus life to bond over their complaints about the Arrillaga chicken.

Even though, chicken aside, we could all do a lot worse than Stanford dining.

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Starbucks, differential treatment and unequal justice https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/24/starbucks-differential-treatment-and-unequal-justice/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/24/starbucks-differential-treatment-and-unequal-justice/#respond Tue, 24 Apr 2018 12:00:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1139868 Terence Zhao discusses how the recent incident at Starbucks is indicative of how differently our society still treats people.

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Once, I had to meet a friend at Starbucks. I showed up early, and they weren’t there yet, so I grabbed a table and sat down to wait for my friend to show before ordering.

Before I knew it, there was an employee in my face, asking me to order something first because “the tables were reserved for customers.”

And this happened again at another Starbucks a while later. So, I just assumed after the fact that this was the official Starbucks policy and made sure I always ordered something first when I go to a Starbucks before grabbing a seat or using the restroom.

Then, the incident in Philadelphia happened. Two black men were arrested at a Starbucks for not ordering immediately — they were waiting for the person they were meeting to show up. This itself did not surprise me — it was just another one of depressingly many cases of racism and discrimination in America. What really blew my mind was the reaction, because all of a sudden, I read a deluge of commentators talking about how they can sit at Starbucks for hours without buying anything and never be bothered by anyone.

Wait, can you really?

And all of a sudden, I was inundated at once by both anger and self-doubt.  Angry because I was apparently treated differently from all these other people, and confused because I don’t know what exactly it was that caused me to be treated differently. What was it? The color of my skin? The fact that I had been a teenager? Something else I’m not even aware of?

And frankly, I didn’t even mind the policy I was subjected to — it seemed like an eminently reasonable rule to me. If it were applied equally to everyone, I’m fairly sure I’d have no objections.

But it clearly wasn’t, and to this moment, I’m not exactly sure what the actual policy was. To find out, I even went around and asked my friends about their experiences. It was shockingly unhelpful, because the responses ranged from “wait, you’re allowed to sit down without buying anything?” to “wait, they tried to kick you out for not buying anything?”

In short, the policy is unclear. What was clear, however, was that different people were definitely being treated differently.

I had a similar moment when I was talking to some friends about police brutality last year. I remember being asked why I found police so inherently threatening.

“It’s a big man approaching me with his hand on the holster, what else am I supposed to feel?”

“Wait, what do you mean his hand on the holster?”

And that was the day I learned that it was not actually standard police procedure to approach you with one hand on the holster of their gun, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice.

And whether it was talking about police brutality or Starbucks, I got this strange, terrifying sensation where I felt almost as I was having a conversation with an international student, comparing what it’s like in our respective countries. We each have a conception of what America is like, and when we talk to people from a different environment, and we realize, to our horror, that sometimes our America is not only not what the other person experiences, but not even something they thought was conceivable. We live in an America where some people will never see what’s wrong, and others are never aware that things could be done differently or — God forbid — correctly.

Back in the days of Jim Crow, the discrimination was atrocious, but at least everyone was aware of how that discrimination worked. If you were white, you knew that nonwhites had to enter the store from the back (and vice versa) because there was a sign that said so. Now, we live in an illusion of equality. We live our lives thinking that what we go through is normal, that it’s what America is like, not knowing that even as we are getting coffee in the same Starbucks, we are living in different Americas.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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When Silicon Valley accidentally reinvents the city bus https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/when-silicon-valley-accidentally-reinvents-the-city-bus/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/when-silicon-valley-accidentally-reinvents-the-city-bus/#respond Mon, 09 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1138889 Terence Zhao reflects on how Silicon Valley's love of innovation and allergy to looking outward has caused the reinvention of mundane things.

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About a month ago, tech mogul Elon Musk came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea:

“[Thousands] of small stations the size of a single parking space that take you very close to your destination [and] blend seamlessly into the fabric of a city,” Musk gushed on Twitter.

The internet very quickly pointed out the problem: These things already exist. In fact, there is a name for them: bus stops.

When this happened, I (and many other urbanism nerds on the internet) had a grand old time mocking ol’ Musky because, well, it was pretty funny. I, for one, made a meme about it that briefly went viral, but that’s not the point. Because when the laughter stopped, we were inevitably reminded of the sobering reality: that one of the world’s most well-known innovators was proud to have spent a significant amount of time to come up with a supposedly exciting new idea, which turned out to be nothing more than a bus stop, one of the most mundane and basic pieces of transportation infrastructure imaginable.

When Silicon Valley accidentally reinvents the city bus
On Twitter, Elon Musk proposed an innovative idea suspiciously similar to the city bus (Courtesy of Twitter)

If this were a one-off example, I think it’d be fair for everyone to just laugh it off and move on. But it isn’t. The tech industry, in recent years, has had a series of similar incidents where a company’s “brilliant new idea” turns out to be merely a reinvention of an extremely mundane concept. Elon Musk is not the only one to have reinvented the bus; Lyft, for example, launched a service called “shuttle” that promises “a low fixed fare along convenient routes, with no surprise stops” — literally a bus. Another company came up with the idea of “co-living,” which, if you think about it, is really just another way of saying having a roommate. Another startup, for example, came up with the idea of “[letting] neighbors pool their money to invest in their communities” and did not realize that they’ve simply described taxes.

I can go on listing examples like this for a very long time, and there’s undoubtedly something funny at first about mocking the failures of Silicon Valley. But, after a while, it also becomes clear that there is something that feels inherently ugly about a group of well-off scientists literally reinventing the city bus without realizing it again and again — that these failures are actually emblematic of a larger, more systematic failure of the industry and highlight just how out-of-touch and siloed the tech world has become.

If you think about it, there’s no real reason to expect tech workers to be familiar with a city bus. Simply basing off my experiences with my peers Stanford, many of whom obviously do go on to work in tech, I’m entirely certain that there are plenty of people working for Musk or for Lyft who have never ridden a city bus, either while growing up or as adults today. And why would they have, when they can afford their own cars or be able to travel to work on private luxury buses (the so-called Google buses) that their companies provide?

Instead of fixing things, tech reinvents things, disrupts things and creates new things. And I believe that this irreverent, revolutionary and innovating spirit of Stanford and Silicon Valley is fundamentally good, and the pursuit of that spirit is one of the main reasons that brought me here to Stanford. Yet, with that said, it is also patently absurd to think that all the world’s problems could be solved by starting at ground zero and bypassing the entirety of established traditions and institutions in the name of innovation.

By pretending to operate in a blank slate free of social and historical context and punctuated only by deployment of its so-called innovations, the tech industry absolves itself from social responsibility. The tech industry operates as if under a mandate that makes any and all forms of disruption and innovation of the status quo intrinsically and objectively good — the kind of mandate, for example, that allows the entire industry to cheer on autonomous vehicle technology with not a care in the world that it will threaten the jobs of 4.1 million Americans.

Of course, many existing structures and systems in our society are deeply flawed. Are there problems with public bus services? Of course. Are there things wrong with how taxes are collected and distributed? Of course. But the default reaction to a flawed system cannot simply be to let it die and start right over because, frankly, there is absolutely no guarantee that the new systems would be any better. An app from Silicon Valley will almost certainly not end the millenia-old struggle over what constitutes a fair tax system, a struggle that has taken down regimes and civilizations. Similarly, a bus service from Lyft will almost certainly not make transportation better for the low-income segments of the population that are most reliant on buses to get around.

And that is not to question the motivations of anyone in tech — I am certain that there are plenty of people in tech who work because they want to make the world a better place, and that desire is undeniably good. But, at the same time, utopia is not an Apple 1. It cannot be built from scratch behind the closed doors of a Silicon Valley garage. Reforming and repairing institutions is, without a doubt, frustrating and thankless, which is unfortunately the very antithesis of the shiny, glamorous, instant-gratification ethos of Silicon Valley. And for us at Stanford — the de facto finishing school of Silicon Valley — this understanding is especially relevant. Because ultimately, I know that we do want to make the world better place and not just reinvent the bus again and again.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Stanford bubble? What bubble? https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/stanford-bubble-what-bubble/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/03/06/stanford-bubble-what-bubble/#respond Tue, 06 Mar 2018 13:00:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1137789 Terence Zhao discusses how the "Stanford Bubble" may be only one way. It keeps us in, while the world outside loves to peer inside.

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Earlier this quarter, I woke up one morning to an unforgettable text:

“Dude, you’re on the front page of Jihad Watch.” And sure enough, on the screenshot sent over to me, there was a picture of me grinning widely under the Jihad Watch banner.

Well then.

A few weeks later, an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal boldly suggested that campus protesters have “given up” on resisting Charles Murray. His rationale? The protest against him seemed to the author “formulaic and insipid.” He also didn’t like the rap performance we had during the rally.

Well then.

I can’t help but observe something interesting out of incidents like this, which is that these people seem to assign a bizarrely high amount of weight to the actions of random college students doing typical, unremarkable college student things: Writing op-eds in campus papers and doing spoken word.

***

Here at Stanford, we are strangely reverent to the narrative that we live and study in an enclosed bubble, separate and distinct from the real world outside. And on some level, it does seem like we live in a different world at Stanford: We have an unreasonably beautiful and manicured campus; most of our students come from and live in immense privilege; our culture and our students are hopelessly nerdy; our on-campus jobs pay abnormally high wages … you could go on like this for a while.

But if this campus seems keen on separating us from the world, the world seems even more keen to see what we’re up to. If you look back at the headlines from earlier, my name wasn’t in the Jihad Watch headline – Stanford’s was. As for The Wall Street Journal op-ed, it wasn’t just the protesters that the author found “insipid”; instead, it read, “Stanford appeared to have exhausted itself.”

We may live in a bubble, but we are wrong to pretend like we are removed from the effects of the real world, because there is a significant segment of the world that associates a great deal of meaning with the Stanford brand (due in no small part to its meticulous cultivation by the administration).

Reverence for that brand is certainly not universal – least of all here on campus, where I know many of us here would hesitate to brag about our elite status. While we are probably right to not let that get to our heads, that is not going to magically wish away our elite reputation, and the requisite attention that comes with that reputation.

It is a reputation that makes headlines that mention “Stanford” or “Stanford students” catchy, because there is an inherent ethos attached to those phrases. The credibility of that word “Stanford” makes whatever thing Stanford professors or students do seem important, or ingenious, or trend-setting. And that sentiment is precisely what drove a Wall Street Journal contributor to be able to suggest that college campuses – all college campuses in America – are warming up to Charles Murray after seeing only what happened at Stanford. In other words, because of our perceived standing, the impact of our actions are always amplified, because we are part of an institution that has successfully marketed itself as a place characterized by innovative ways of thinking and doing, and that apparently includes our actions as undergraduates as well.

Whether we like it or not, whether we deserve it or not, we are viewed as special because we are Stanford, and with that comes a group of people at the ready to analyze our every move, and to use that analysis – however flawed – to draw conclusions for the entire generation. Because we live inside the bubble, we focus only on the constraining force that keeps us inside. But, what we miss is that the walls of the bubble – regardless how solid they seem, are nonetheless invisible – and the subject of countless observers constantly watching from the outside. Even as we feel cut off from the world, the world sees us, and what we do impacts the world.

 

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Mirai Nagasu and home https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/20/mirai-nagasu-and-home/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/20/mirai-nagasu-and-home/#respond Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:00:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136989 Growing up in China when I was younger, there was this one news story that would show up every time there was a major athletic event like the Olympics. The motif is always exactly the same: a tiny, remote village in the middle of nowhere is holding a glorious homecoming celebration for a native son or […]

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Growing up in China when I was younger, there was this one news story that would show up every time there was a major athletic event like the Olympics. The motif is always exactly the same: a tiny, remote village in the middle of nowhere is holding a glorious homecoming celebration for a native son or daughter who has won a medal. It starts off with clips of the athlete’s spectacular feat. Then, it’s interview after interview with happy townsfolk who just cannot contain their joy as they talk about how proud they are of their hero and how wonderful it is that their obscure hometown is being featured on national TV for the best reason possible.

These stories always made me smile, but I found myself unable to really relate to them. After all, I was growing up in the furthest thing from a remote village: Beijing, one of the world’s biggest megacities and epicenter of the world’s most populous country for the past eight centuries.

I assumed that I’d never experience what it felt like to be one of those celebrating folks in a small town. And yet, that was exactly who I became as I watched the video of Mirai Nagasu landing a triple axel at the Pyeongchang Olympics again and again.

It’s one of those magical moments that just takes your breath away. But it was made infinitely more special because that Olympic history was made by someone from where I’m from. Mirai Nagasu grew up in Arcadia, California, my adopted hometown. She went to my high school. Her parents’ sushi restaurant is two blocks from my house. And as I watched that beautiful landing, I could just feel the entire community feeling that jubilation with her as we saw our remote little town get a spot on national TV.

It is, on some level, bizarre to call Arcadia remote, given that we are a mere 30-minute metro ride from downtown Los Angeles. But it sure does feel that way. I still remember when I invited some Stanford friends home for Thanksgiving my freshman year, and I could just feel their shock and bewilderment as they saw Arcadia for the first time, with its yellow faces everywhere and signs in Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean lining the streets. And from their bewilderment, I felt deep in my gut how strange, remote, distant my community felt to most of America.

After Thanksgiving dinner, we went to a boba teahouse (which, in typical fashion, did not have special holiday hours on Thanksgiving). As we sat down, one of my friends observed: “you know, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a restaurant in America where the entire room is Asian.”

I looked at the rest of my friends, and they all nodded in agreement.

“Well, it’s pretty common out here,” I answered — and it is. But I couldn’t help seeing my community through an outsider’s eyes: a roomful of Asian faces consuming a strange Asian drink, but also speaking English while Chance the Rapper played in the background. It’s certainly different, but we are all different in our own ways. And Arcadia is not American despite being different: it is American precisely because it is different. America is a beautiful mosaic of communities and identities; Arcadia — and Asian America as a whole, too — is just another radiant tile in that mosaic. And that teahouse is a little slice of my America. It’s where I’m from, and it’s where I’m at home.

But I know all too well that there are plenty of people out there who don’t share this belief. To them, Arcadia is not really American. To them, that teahouse is foreign and undesirable, and the patrons are bad immigrants needing assimilation, never mind the fact that most of those people were probably born in the U.S.

So, even as I let that wave of happiness for Mirai Nagasu wash over me, I prepared for the inevitable, which came in the form of New York Times editor Bari Weiss retweeting the video with the caption “Immigrants: they get the job done.”

Which is a weird thing to say about someone born and raised in Los Angeles. But Weiss didn’t care, claiming her statement was still correct in spirit because “her parents are immigrants.”

And there it is.

The term “immigrant” bore no relation to Mirai’s actual immigration status. It was an indicator for the fact that she, like her parents, look different from, say, Bari Weiss. For people like Weiss, Mirai Nagasu was not a true American, just like Arcadia will never be a true American town. Mirai will always be just a perpetual foreigner, allowed here to “get the job done” — in this case, winning medals in the Olympics; her identity, personality and community are ignored altogether, all boiled down into some simplistic and inaccurate characterization of “immigrant.”

And similarly, Arcadia will just be the answer Mirai gives before people like Bari Weiss ask her: “No, but where are you really from?” And it’s not just Bari Weiss. I’ve encountered so many of these people in life who can make people who look like me feel un-American even when paying a compliment, and I’m sure Mirai Nagasu has as well.

Frustrated with it all, I go back to the video and play it again. And I hear the commentator say: “ … first American lady to to do the triple axel at the Olympics.”

First American lady.

And for a few moments there, our hometown of yellow faces sipping boba, too, could be just American: an American town, home to an American hero.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu

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Fear and silence https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/05/fear-and-silence/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/02/05/fear-and-silence/#respond Mon, 05 Feb 2018 13:00:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1136118 Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article stated that The Stanford Review provided Robert Spencer with their article on Professor Palumbo-Liu for publication on his blog, however the Review and Mr. Spencer have denied this and the Daily could not confirm the columnist’s claim. In addition, Mr. Spencer was banned from entering the UK […]

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Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article stated that The Stanford Review provided Robert Spencer with their article on Professor Palumbo-Liu for publication on his blog, however the Review and Mr. Spencer have denied this and the Daily could not confirm the columnist’s claim. In addition, Mr. Spencer was banned from entering the UK for statements with the potential to cause “inter-community violence” and “foster hatred”, not because he was deemed a “national security threat”. The Daily regrets these errors.

Over the course of my time at Stanford, one of the oddest things I have noticed is the strong interest many professors express towards the Cultural Revolution in China — specifically, the vicious attacks on university professors and academics that led to many being fired, arrested, hurt or even killed.

Hearing horror stories from that era is almost like watching something out of “Black Mirror”: something distinctly awful and dystopian, made all the more chilling because it could easily happen to us, right here and now. The professors affected by the Cultural Revolution were just like ours, the only difference being that the accident of birth placed them in a different country a few decades earlier. So on some level, I understand the visceral appeal and relatability of these stories to many of my professors. But these stories are ultimately about traumatic, horrible events, made palatable to us as conversation fodder only because of the privilege we have of being removed from ever fearing that our professors’ lives would be endangered by what they have to say.

Well, we had that privilege.

If you haven’t been following closely, the Review published a hit piece against David Palumbo-Liu, an esteemed professor on campus and also one of the first to be affiliated with the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity program. In the piece, the Review calls Palumbo-Liu a “thug,” and makes absolutely baseless claims of him supporting violence, despite the professor stating the exact opposite during his interview with them. The Review’s article then found its way onto the blog of Robert Spencer, a noted right-wing bigot,  who is banned from entering the UK  for “statements which may ‘foster hatred’ and lead to ‘inter-community violence'” in the country. Next thing we know, a respected Stanford professor and his family are getting death threats all because of completely unsubstantiated slander from a student group that disagrees with his views.

And while the Review clearly did not call for violence against Palumbo-Liu, their falsification and villainization certainly had a role to play in what came after. Moreover, I think it is safe to say that they knew the kind of attention these manufactured falsehoods could garner from certain people.

Forget banning speakers or liberal bubbles — this is an infringement on free speech in its purest and ugliest form: using the threat of violence and force to silence those who disagree. It is designed to intimidate and make sure that those who disagree stay silent rather than speak up. The Review loves to hide behind “free speech” when it is convenient, but frankly, for all their self-proclaimed victimhood, campus conservatives like the Review and the College Republicans exercise their right to speak just fine. They were able to bring in their speaker and let him spew his hatred while being protected by $7,000-a-night security personnel paid for, mostly, by your ASSU funds.

Where is Palumbo-Liu’s right to speak without fear of reprisal? Where is his $7,000-a-night security to keep him and his family safe? If this is not the height of hypocrisy on the part of the Review, I don’t know what is.

Over the past years, I’ve been told by many people whom I deeply respect that the best way to deal with provocateurs like the Review is to ignore them and withhold the attention they need to be relevant. And I used to believe this too. But as this episode proves, there are some things that this strategy isn’t good for. Lying about a professor to generate fake controversy requires no readership or attention from the Stanford community if those lies can simply be exported to external actors, who are all too happy to advance these falsehoods. The Review was able to perform this grievous misrepresentation of a professor and face — so far — absolutely zero repercussions for what they have done. And if this is going to be the new normal, I am gravely concerned about what more is to come.

The thing about fascism and authoritarianism is that it happens gradually and incrementally so that individual incidents within that process tend to fall under the radar for most people. What happened here is still thankfully a far cry from teams of Red Guards causing wanton murder and destruction in the name of Chairman Mao, but it is still too close for comfort. I’m generally not fond of slippery slope arguments, but calling a highly-regarded professor a thug and slandering him in an article that caused death threats against him and his family is also no ordinary incident, and we cannot simply allow it to slip by unnoticed. Stanford deserves better. We all deserve better.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu

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A message to immigrant parents https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/31/a-message-to-immigrant-parents/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/31/a-message-to-immigrant-parents/#respond Wed, 31 May 2017 07:53:39 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1128699 The words that follow are not mine, but I thought they would be relevant to share in light of the issues and struggles Chinese Americans - and, more broadly, most Asian Americans - including those of us at Stanford - face.

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Last week, I had the privilege of attending a community conversation about mental health in Stanford’s Asian American community. One of the motifs that came up again and again during this conversation was how difficult it was to communicate to our parents the struggles we face when they have made the ultimate sacrifice of uprooting their entire lives for the sake of our well-being and our futures. And yet, it also seemed like something that has gone unsaid for too long, whether it is to our parents, to our community or to the world.

The words that follow are not mine, but I thought they would be relevant to share in light of the issues and struggles Chinese-Americans – and, more broadly, most Asian-Americans (including those of us at Stanford) – face. They were originally written by an anonymous poster on a Chinese forum in Chinese. The following is a somewhat looser translation of that text, with some abridgments for the sake of length.

For many years now, immigrating to America has been the dream of many Chinese parents. These parents think that America has less polluted air, higher standards of living, higher wages and, most importantly, a better future for their children. So, they don’t hesitate to bring their kids over to America at any cost and as early as possible. If their kids can be born here, so much the better, since that way, the kids would, from the moment of their birth, be bestowed that coveted title of “American citizen.” Parents think that kids, by virtue of their young age, are infinitely adaptable, and so growing up in America will afford them myriad opportunities when they grow up. Ask first-generation Chinese immigrants why they came, and you’ll hear a whole lot of “for my kids’ futures.”

But, after many years of thinking, pondering and contemplation, I realized that these parents understand very little about how detrimental it is for their kids to grow up Chinese-American when it comes to their sense of belonging, their identity, their ability to socialize and build networks and their future career trajectories. They are blinded by what’s immediately visible: the admittedly numerous problems facing Chinese society today. But where they fail is that they buy into the narrative that America is somehow perfect enough that their kids will simply – as if by magic – live happily ever after. Of course, the reality is far more complex and tragic than many well-intentioned immigrant parents understand.

Most of these parents – like most immigrants, really – don’t truly understand America or how it treats minorities like Chinese-Americans. What they can see clearly is China: the pollution in the air they breathe, the pressure in the education system they know and went through, the regional discrimination they see, the negative aspects of society and culture they experience. What they don’t have is a similarly objective view of America, which is composed of tidbits of information from friends, the Internet and TV – all of which are by no means objective. And what they tend not to hear about is the Chinese-American experience and the discrimination we face on a daily basis.

I’ve seldom seen Chinese-Americans tell their immigrant parents about their own experiences growing up in America. It’s partly because a lot of us can’t even speak our parents’ language, having grown up in environments where there isn’t much opportunity to speak it beyond the Chinese school we attend for a few hours on weekends. We aren’t able to communicate fully with our parents, and we certainly aren’t able to honestly convey the realities of being Chinese-Americans to them. So our parents, not hearing anything to the contrary, assume that we are perfectly happy, and they take our silence to mean that we have indeed become Americans, like they had hoped.

But, of course, this is not the case. For starters, we are placed in a state of perpetual cultural alienation from the American majority – something which many first-generation immigrant parents think is unique to their experience and are often unable to comprehend. Even though we speak English as well as anyone else, we look different, and we are always seen as the “other” because of it. Parents would be mistaken if they think this is something that could simply be remedied through hard work. We are stereotyped as hard-working nerds without leadership abilities, without personality, without verbal skills. Many in this country – including much of media – would rather make stereotyped jokes about how we are weak, or how our eyes are small, how we are unattractive and so on. In school, we might be bullied for these things. In society, these prejudices will manifest in other, more hidden ways. All of these things, of course, have a profoundly negative impact in the mental health of Chinese-American kids.

But while we are never accepted as fully “American,” we are also never accepted as fully Chinese. I’ve seen international students from China mock us for the fact that despite what we look like, we can’t produce a single coherent sentence in our ancestral language. We are essentially placed in a bizarre cultural crevice where we are neither accepted by people who look like us, nor people who sound like us. We are unable to be fully immersed in the society in which we are supposed to belong, and we are also severed from whatever support or connection China might have given us. We are cleaved from our Chinese identities because of our disconnect with China’s language and culture, and this is something that even our first-generation parents cannot understand. They chose to come here, and they potentially have the choice to go back if it really came down to it. Chinese-Americans do not have that choice. We are essentially doomed, despite having the appearance of a Chinese person, to only be able to live in the West, where we will always be second-class citizens. Everyone needs a home, but Chinese-Americans do not. We’re not fully accepted by China, and we are not accepted by America. It’s an unspeakable, incomprehensible loneliness.

The point of all this is that there is a balance to be struck here. Parents are eager to bring their children to the U.S. for a better life, but what they don’t quite understand is that, for these kids, survival is an uphill battle that can often do significant damage to their mental health. We are strangers in two lands, losing our birthright connections to China but also being a second-class citizen in a country that does not value yellow faces, and, in the end, I wonder if it is all worth it. Maybe if God made us Chinese, we should be proud of that, and proudly be who we are, rather than try to force ourselves into the mold of the “Westerner” that we will never be.

 

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The problem with debates https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/24/the-problem-with-debates/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/24/the-problem-with-debates/#respond Wed, 24 May 2017 07:51:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1127962 It’s a noble goal to have, and I genuinely admire the SPU’s efforts. However, their first production, a debate about whether or not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, leaves much to be desired

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The Stanford Political Union is a new student group that has been making waves on campus. It distinguishes itself from many other political organizations on campus by hosting debates between two speakers. As the group claims in its slogan, “the best way to learn is to debate those who disagree.”

It’s a noble goal to have, and I genuinely admire the SPU’s efforts. However, their first production, a debate about whether or not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, leaves much to be desired.

There is a misconception that in a bipartisan debate such as this, as long as the two sides are treated equally by the moderator, there can be no bias on the part of the organizer. However, this is decidedly not the case; the most influential bias occurs even before the actual debate commences. Before any speaker is able to take the stage, the organizers of the debate have tremendous leeway with regards to who to invite, what questions to ask and how the event should be framed. And by determining these, the organizer will have also determined – far in advance of the actual debate itself – what ideas are legitimized, and what ideas are not.

So, when the SPU puts on a debate entitled “Should We Repeal Obamacare?”, the repeal of Obamacare is thus given legitimacy, as well as half the stage.

But does that position really deserve half the stage? Does it really deserve any part of the stage?

At the time of this event, only 17 percent of Americans support the latest version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the GOP replacement for Obamacare. While 17 percent doesn’t seem low, it is actually excruciatingly so in the context of polling numbers. For your reference, 29 percent of Americans surveyed back in 2015 supported replacing the Obama administration with a military junta. And, of course, anyone who seriously suggests a military coup – especially in the latter days of the Obama administration, where everything was going fairly smoothly – would be laughed out of any serious political conversation.

And yet, repealing Obamacare, a position that is even more on the fringe and almost twice as unpopular as, again, overthrowing the democratically elected U.S. government via a military coup, is somehow to be respected as a legitimate position that we should hear out, even though an overwhelming majority of Americans, including most Republicans, reject it.

Now, that is not to say that all unpopular opinions ought to be rejected outright. For example, when the U.S. first invaded Iraq, the percentage of Americans who did not support the war was also abysmally low, but that opinion was nonetheless important. However, if that was the goal of SPU – to showcase a marginalized viewpoint – they must also be able to recognize the bias inherent in that decision. Of course, I am by no means attacking the good people at the SPU or calling them biased propagandists. They likely came from very good intentions and didn’t want to silence conservative voices at a campus generally characterized as a “liberal bubble.” But, for once, it looks like the liberal bubble is (shockingly) not to blame, because the Obamacare repeal is just as unpopular outside the bubble, too. And, whether intentional or not, the very inclusion of this position in the debate is a form of bias, because it lends mainstream credibility to a fringe idea. In other words, the debate was not impartial, because in practice, it has effectively promoted the Obamacare repeal position.

But, more importantly, the debate was not impartial because it confuses impartiality with bipartisanship. By virtue of how it is framed, this debate essentially saw a battle between the Democratic (keep Obamacare) and Republican (repeal Obamacare) party lines. And it reflects a larger tendency in political circles to simply take the mainstream Republican and Democratic positions as the two opposite sides to an issue, even if one or both of those positions might not be tenable or remotely popular. In the case of healthcare, then, the issue becomes framed in an unhelpful binary: Should we repeal Obamacare? And, in doing so, the SPU has effectively excluded policy solutions that are not part of this binary, but are far more popular. For example, to the left of the pro-Obamacare position is the single-payer model, or Medicare for all. This is currently in the works for the state of California and has consistently been favored by a majority of Americans and, I am confident to assume, a far larger chunk of the student population than those who support an Obamacare repeal.

And, in the context of Stanford, this is illustrative of the risks of of consistently trying to frame the campus political climate as being divided between a dominant homogenous group of “liberals” and a beleaguered minority of “conservatives”. According to a poll from The Daily, 85 percent of undergraduates voted for Hillary Clinton. It would be ludicrous, though, to suggest that the vast majority of Stanford undergrads think alike – precisely the opposite. Take single-payer, for example: There is a huge level of disagreement between students here – all of whom identify as left-leaning – whether it is a good idea, and a debate between these two factions would certainly also be productive and, frankly, be more relevant to more students on campus.

Or, thinking a little further out of the box, perhaps there wouldn’t just be a binary – maybe it would be a three-sided dialogue, between supporters of single payer, the status quo, and the repeal.

But that was not the debate we had. Instead, we were presented with a restrictive, binary question that has been asked to death in Washington: Should Obamacare be repealed? Of course, it was better than having no debate at all. But, surely, we can progress to a more sophisticated question.

 

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

 

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Dear Mrs. Clinton: Please retire. https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/10/me-mg-dear-mrs-clinton-please-retire/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/10/me-mg-dear-mrs-clinton-please-retire/#respond Wed, 10 May 2017 07:37:34 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1127251 Apparently, Hillary is back. And, not only that, she has anointed herself as part of the Resistance, and launched a new super-PAC. To which I must ask: has anyone learned anything?

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Into exile I must go. Failed, I have.”

For people who didn’t spend approximately 60 percent of their childhood watching Star Wars movies over and over again like I did, Jedi Master Yoda uttered these words following his failure to prevent Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from wiping out the Jedi order and taking over the galaxy. And so Yoda escaped into a self-imposed exile on the swampy jungle planet of Dagobah.

Mixed into the flurry of emotions I had following the election, I had a distinct moment of Star Wars deja vu when people found Hillary Clinton wandering in the woods two days after her loss. And for the next month or so, this happened regularly: People in upstate New York just kept running into Hillary Clinton in the woods.

So, maybe – just maybe – I thought to myself, “Hillary Clinton has pulled a Yoda.” After three long and eventful decades in public life, and quickly approaching her 70s, maybe Hillary has finally decided to retire. But, apparently, she is back. And, not only that, she has anointed herself as part of the Resistance and launched a new super-PAC.

To which I must ask: Has anyone learned anything?

During the primaries, I opposed Clinton and I thought she was a bad candidate. But back then, it was just my own opinion – shared by many, to be sure, but still just an opinion.

But now, it’s no longer an opinion – it’s an empirical fact: Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate. Donald Trump is a man who has a literal golden throne, and Hillary Clinton somehow still came off as more out of touch than him. Donald Trump is a sex offender who brags about it on tape, and Hillary Clinton still could not win against him. Twenty-eight percent of Trump voters thought the man wasn’t honest, 20 percent had an unfavorable view of him, 26 percent thought he didn’t have the right temperament and 23 percent thought he was downright unqualified to serve – and Hillary Clinton still could not win against him. Donald Trump was the most unpopular presidential candidate in American history, and Hillary Clinton still could not win against him. If Trump is even one-tenth as bad as we on the left – and about two-thirds of the country – seem to agree he is, then there shouldn’t be any excuse for why Hillary Clinton could have lost this thing, and it would be a case of extreme cognitive dissonance to argue that she was somehow a good candidate. She wasn’t.

The left seems to have a hard time seeing the situation rationally here, and I understand why – we, on some intuitive level, still feel bad for Hillary, who has undoubtedly not had an easy go at this election or, for that matter, life. So, it is of course far easier for us – yes, even me, who has absolutely no love for Hillary – to get mad at Trump instead of her. But it doesn’t do us any good to do that, because we must come to terms with the fact that Hillary bears a tremendous amount of responsibility for the debacle we are in.

To be fair, the lion’s share of the blame lies (of course) with Trump, but it doesn’t mean we should simply overlook Hillary’s role. She was tasked with holding the fort – a historical responsibility to hold us back from the deluge of incompetent proto-fascism. She was not a mere victim of Trump – she is an experienced, seasoned, powerful and accomplished politician and statesman. She had agency. She did not succumb to the inevitable, she simply failed, and now the fate of the republic and American democracy is at stake because of her failure. So it is somewhat strange that Hillary Clinton would declare herself part of the Resistance. The only reason we have a Resistance is because she lost. If she had won, most of the left would have settled back into the peaceful, humdrum news cycle we had under the Obama years while people like me use up another four years’ worth of column inches complaining about how the administration isn’t being leftwing enough.

Now, the job at hand is to save America from Trump’s harmful policies, to guide the Democratic Party out of wilderness and to create a better America for now and for the future, and that job cannot be left in the hands of Hillary Clinton after she performed so miserably at it the first time around.

And this really isn’t about scapegoating or vilifying Hillary Clinton – assigning blame at this point is unproductive. But it is nonetheless important to draw a line in the sand here, and to make clear that based on her past performance, she must not be handed the helms of the resistance, lest we risk of another four years of the Trump administration.

History repeats itself: First as a tragedy, and then as a farce. The election of Donald Trump was the tragedy, and I would plead to Mrs. Clinton: Please, if you’re going to pursue the farce, at least save it for the woods, where it won’t hurt anyone else.

 

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Does The Review care about undocumented students? https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/03/does-the-review-care-about-undocumented-students/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/05/03/does-the-review-care-about-undocumented-students/#respond Wed, 03 May 2017 07:04:07 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126922 What is more perverse about The Review's article is the callously nonchalant erasure of the concerns of undocumented students from their discussion of a protest about the interests and rights of those students.

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On April 29, The Stanford Review yet again assumed its role as Stanford’s instigator-in-chief by publishing a tirade (by two writers who are apparently not to be conflated with The Review “as an institution” in any way) complaining about a mostly silent protest staged by fellow students urging the administration to declare this University a sanctuary campus.

It is no secret that I generally do not agree with The Review on most matters, including here, where I disagree with the writers’ stance on campus activism – and that, really, is a difference of opinion. But, what is more perverse about this article is the callously nonchalant erasure of the concerns of undocumented students from their discussion of a protest about the interests and rights of those students.

Most emblematic of this is the following determination: “The activists claimed that the protest was meant to hold Stanford ‘accountable.’ It wasn’t clear, however, who exactly the University is supposed to be accountable to.

This is, in all honesty, perhaps the single most baffling thing I have ever seen The Review publish. Regardless of whether one agrees with the protesters or not, it seems objectively clear to whom the protesters are demanding the University be accountable – undocumented students. Agree or disagree with the activist position, it seems incredibly irresponsible for these writers to not even attempt to understand such a basic part of the issue at hand; not addressing the fate of our fellow Stanford students who are at risk of deportation seems grotesquely dismissive.

And indeed, dismissiveness seems to be the general theme of the entire piece. “Stanford should certainly put its students first  –  but not ahead of the law,” The Review declares in an inherently contradictory statement that is effectively stating that Stanford should put students second. The piece warns that “by declaring itself a sanctuary campus, Stanford would be risking the loss of billions of dollars of funding for invaluable research that pushes the horizons of human achievement and saves lives,” which is a nice turn of phrase that is so broad and nebulous that it has no meaning. The writers here seem to be absolutely fine with saving lives in the abstract, but as to their actual fellow students whose lives would undoubtedly be harmed by deportation, they make absolutely no mention in the entire article. To them, the term “sanctuary campus” has no connection to human lives, to the very people who study with them, who work with them, who teach them and who toil to keep their residence halls clean, their stomachs fed and their quads landscaped. To them, the term “sanctuary campus” is just a “dubious legal moniker” and a “political fad.” The entire debate seems like a game, a farce, something that could be “debated” without ever considering the real-life consequences in our community.

While the administration has not declared Stanford a sanctuary campus, it has released a statement reiterating Stanford’s support for “the ability of undocumented students to continue their studies at Stanford and earn a degree.” However, these writers are in no way inclined to join suit. Instead, they outright reject the notion that “all immigrants are welcome here.” It doesn’t matter if you are so brilliant and accomplished. It doesn’t matter if you were able to overcome the myriad obstacles of being undocumented in America (something the authors of this piece seem to know nothing about) so that you could earn yourself a place in one of the finest and most selective universities in the world. It doesn’t matter – if you are unable to overcome an ultimately arbitrary technicality of “American legal jurisprudence,” you are not welcome here like other immigrants or other students are, according to the arguments put forth in this article.

When each one of us enrolled at Stanford, we bound ourselves to the Fundamental Standard, which begins:

“Students are expected to respect and uphold the rights and dignity of others regardless of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or socioeconomic status.”

I can only hope that the next time The Review discusses these issues, their writers will be more empathetic and respectful of everyone in the Stanford community, regardless of immigration status.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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O’Reilly: an obituary https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/21/oreilly-an-obituary/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/21/oreilly-an-obituary/#respond Fri, 21 Apr 2017 07:19:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126246 For better or worse, the man has become iconic, and it’s difficult to imagine him off the air. And, in a way, calling this an obituary is quite fitting, because O’Reilly’s life is so inexorably connected to the anchor’s desk he occupied every weekday.

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I think it goes without saying that Bill O’Reilly isn’t really dead. I titled this an “obituary” because, frankly, I just always expected O’Reilly to die on the job, which is not so much a comment on the proximity of his demise, but more of a reflection of my inability to see the man retire. He has been on air since what seems like the beginning of time — his stint at Fox News alone has spanned more than two decades. For better or worse, the man has become iconic, and it’s difficult to imagine him off the air. And, in a way, calling this an obituary is quite fitting, because O’Reilly’s life is so inexorably connected to the anchor’s desk he occupied every weekday. So, now that he has been fired from his show in disgrace over his decades-long habit of sexual harassment, his absence from that desk and the air makes it seem almost like he has indeed passed away.

I confess, I’ve had a minor obsession with the conservative commentator sarcastically nicknamed “Papa Bear” by Stephen Colbert, by which I mean (1) I sometimes do a really bad impression of O’Reilly engaging in either mansplaining or homophobia and (2) I watch O’Reilly’s show occasionally — not every day, and usually not the whole show, but definitely more than a young left-winger is expected to (if you didn’t already assume intuitively as much, the average age of O’Reilly’s audience is a youthful 72). For the most part, it’s an intentionally masochistic/self-flagellating/self-abusive experience because, well, to put it bluntly, his show is terrible. But, there are also particular gems one gets from time to time:

Tide goes in, tide goes out. You can’t explain that.” (Yeah, we can — what we can’t explain is what you were doing skipping science class in sixth grade.)

I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant [in Harlem] and any other restaurant in New York City … even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship … There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.‘” (No comment.)

In certain ghetto neighborhoods, it’s part of the culture — 9-year-old boys and girls are smoking [pot].” (Judging by the previous comment, I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say that O’Reilly knows absolutely nothing about the “ghetto.”)

I could go on for quite a while with these. And these are indeed quite funny — that is, if you manage to forget the fact that the man and his god-awful show actually had influence over politics and public policy in this country. And that brings up a point I think a lot of people on the left are hesitant to concede: Bill O’Reilly is, at the end of the day, a fairly smart individual.

It is, of course, easier to call O’Reilly a racist, an ignoramus, a sex offender or a combination of the three, especially given what we know. But I think that also misses an aspect of O’Reilly that is fairly important. People’s traits, negative or positive, do not exist in a vacuum; they come from somewhere, and in O’Reilly’s case, they come from a very real and historical place that would be remiss for us to ignore. He isn’t just a serial sexual harasser, he is also an embodiment of the so-called “Mad Men” era, during which that kind of behavior was okay. He isn’t just a racist, he is also an embodiment of an era when it was okay to, for example, call a black woman “hot chocolate.” Now, all of those things are terrible, but they sound like things any stereotypical racist great-uncle might say on Thanksgiving, really nothing special. But that great-uncle of yours can only give you his piece once a year, while Bill O’Reilly did it for an hour a day for five days a week, and made his show the top-rated cable news show in America for 15 straight years. And, whereas your great-uncle is rambling about in a drunken rant, O’Reilly has taken his material, crudely offensive in its raw form, and packaged it into something that is legitimate enough to be accepted as serious political commentary. That is both the brilliance and danger of Bill O’Reilly: not only is he a practitioner of horrible things, he is also a missionary for those same things. When he goes on air, he is not just speaking for himself, he is also speaking for an audience who think like him and who can feel safe in their bigotry, misogyny or ignorance, knowing that there is someone in a supposed position of authority and legitimacy who will affirm all of the beliefs that the outside world has deemed unacceptable. While others gave voice to the voiceless, he gave voice to the despicable. Now, at least, he himself will finally suffer some consequences for his own despicable actions.

And so, with that, we are at the end of an era. Bill O’Reilly has gone. And, I thought it’ll be fitting to end here by quoting Papa Bear what I only hope to be one last time:

What does that mean? To end the show?”

Yes, Bill, yes.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The American tourist https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/19/the-american-tourist/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/19/the-american-tourist/#respond Wed, 19 Apr 2017 07:25:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1126102 To be frank, I’m a little frightened by the possibility of studying abroad, not because of culture shock, of the language barrier, or even of the idea of being in an unfamiliar environment. It’s the greater fear of trying to come to terms with the role and the space I will occupy as an American abroad.

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“Where are you studying abroad?”

“Washington, so I guess not really ‘abroad,’ technically.”

“Hey, that’s cool, too! Why Washington and not, like, Florence?”

This has been an exchange I’ve had a lot recently, talking about my plans for next year. And, to be frank, I’m a little frightened by the possibility of studying abroad, not because of culture shock or the language barrier or even of the idea of being in an unfamiliar environment. Instead, it’s the greater fear of trying to come to terms with the role and the space I will occupy as an American abroad.

Last summer, I had the great privilege of participating on a two-week Stanford trip to Beijing, where I was born and raised for the first nine years of my life before I emigrated to America. While I would be hard-pressed to call myself a local these days, I’ve generally had fairly positive feelings in the times I have gone back to visit. For the most part, I felt familiar and at home, able to blend into the rhythm of the city and move freely and comfortably.

This time, though, I was there in the role of a foreign tourist, and everything felt incredibly different. Passing through street markets, the vendors that I’ve gotten used to simply sitting stoically, preparing to haggle with approaching buyers, are now rushing up to push their wares at inflated prices in crude English pidgin. Walking through the same hutong alleyways that I’ve cut through hundreds of times in previous years now felt like an intrusion into a space in which I was clearly not welcome, as residents stare at the group of Stanford gear-clad, backpack-wearing young people that just feels too big to comfortably fit into the narrow street. And looking back at the eyes of those who stared, I realized that it was the same looks of unwelcoming annoyance that I used to give to the double-decker Starline tour buses that cut me off at intersections in LA. And at that point, I really wish there was something magical I could say to the staring people – my former neighbors – that could make them see me differently: I lived here too! Right over there! I used to shop right there! I was born in that hospital! Something.

But there wasn’t anything I could do, because I was an American tourist. Whatever my past experiences were in that city, I no longer lived in it. I came in with an American passport that could take me most places in the world without needing so much as a visa. I paid bills with money I earned at a part-time campus research job that paid 10 times Beijing’s minimum wage. And, when the end of my time there came – whether it be in two weeks (in my case) or in 10 weeks – I could pack up and leave, and be permanently separated (unless I choose not to be) from everything I’ve seen and encountered during that time.

I say this not to disparage the particular program I participated in – it was a phenomenal experience – nor any other program that Bing or any other part of this school that offers, which I imagine are similarly phenomenal. But all of these experiences are, by their very nature, ephemeral, and have that same problem.

And if the former Beijinger in me couldn’t even stand the current tourist version of me, I wonder how different I would be anywhere else? Would I not just be a tourist, studying in a place for a brief moment, and being an intrusive noise that has to be tolerated more than anything else?

I don’t know, but if it takes me inconveniencing and annoying people with self-unawareness and an endless string of faux pas to find out, I’d rather not.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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United Airlines: Corporatocracy in rawest form https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/united-airlines-corporatocracy-in-rawest-form/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/12/united-airlines-corporatocracy-in-rawest-form/#respond Wed, 12 Apr 2017 07:12:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1125725 This incident should immediately sound two alarm bells for anyone who is concerned about justice and, frankly, sanity.

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By now, I think most people have now seen the viral video of an Asian-American doctor who was bloodied and forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight by police officers, all because the flight was overbooked.

This incident should immediately sound two alarm bells for anyone who is concerned about justice and, frankly, sanity.

First, there is something inconceivably grotesque about the way airlines handle overbooked flights, namely: Why in God’s name is the airline simply permitted to de-board paying passengers?

There’s an official answer to that: Some passengers simply don’t show up to their flights, so airlines compensate for that by selling more tickets than they have, which statistically should result in full flights. But, it also often results in them selling more seats than they have, which is really just a nicer way of saying what these incidents actually are – fraud on the part of the airline because it effectively sells products that it already sold to another customer.

Airlines will argue that the practice is part of their business model, but if that is the case, then airlines need a much better business model. It seems conceptually wrong to sell the same product to two different people. And if forcing airlines to take some kind of responsibility for their ticketing means they cannot reap the profits from the empty seats of passengers who do not show up, that’s capitalism. Airlines don’t simply get to rig the laws to create unfair rules that allow them to make money where no opportunity should exist. But, alas, they do. In fact, if you get bumped from a flight and arrive more than four hours late, you are only entitled to up to $1,350 in compensation – a small amount considering how much plane tickets cost and how much delays can jeopardize people’s plans.

Of course, there is a better, fairer way to simply kick people off flights involuntarily: offering compensation to volunteers and increasing the compensation until there are enough takers. I saw this once when I tried to fly on an overbooked American Airlines (not a fan, but credit where credit is due) flight from Philly to Ithaca, New York. The “bidding” for volunteers started at $1,000 for someone to wait for the next flight in six hours. Then it went to $1,500, and then $2,000. It wasn’t until $2,500 was offered that somebody reluctantly changed their plans. And you could say that paying $2,500 to a passenger who probably only spent $200 on their ticket is bad business, but then so is overbooking a flight. Business decisions carry both a benefit and a risk. United seems very content to capitalize on the benefit while twisting the laws so that their customers have to absorb the risks.

Even more disturbing is the role that police officers played in this scenario. Did it seem to anyone watching the video – or on the plane, for that matter – that the officers were serving the public when they bloodied and dragged out a paying passenger like a dead animal? No, they seemed like agents of United Airlines doing their bidding. The passenger was “belligerent” – according to the United CEO, at least – and so he must be removed from the plane; not only that, he will be removed by public agents, paid for not by United but by your tax dollars.

This incident is, of course, reprehensible in and of itself. But perhaps more devastatingly, the incident represents corporatocracy at its worst. Rules are set up – sometimes against logic itself – and enforced by agents of the state, so that these large corporations are able to pocket profits, while any losses they incur are dumped on the heads of average people, like this brutalized passenger.

 
Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Salvaging American democracy https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/05/salvaging-american-democracy/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/04/05/salvaging-american-democracy/#respond Wed, 05 Apr 2017 07:10:36 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1125330 Even if Trump isn’t implicated, his most senior staff already are. Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman, was a Putin agent. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser, was a Turkish agent. Jeff Sessions, current US Attorney General, lied about Russian contacts. The list can go on.

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Last week, while doing some hiking in Southern California, I stumbled upon some stickers affixed to various signs on the trail:

A portrait of a smiling Donald Trump, with the caption, in all caps: “TRAITOR!”

And then, less than a day later, the headlines were screaming: “Michael Flynn offers to testify in exchange for immunity.”

This is quite significant for obvious reasons. First, immunity is a perk offered by prosecutors in exchange for valuable testimony that they cannot get otherwise, so Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who was ousted after illicit foreign ties were discovered, must have something good to tell – or, at least, he seems to think he does. And second, immunity is only valuable to people who are guilty – an innocent witness has no obligation to tell anybody anything, really, since they are just free to go; in other words, it doesn’t make sense for Flynn to bargain for immunity unless he’s fairly sure he’s going to be found guilty of something in the first place.

So far, nobody has taken Flynn up on his offer, and the investigation on the Trump campaign’s possibly treasonous connections to Russia continues. But, there’s really only two ways in which this debacle could end: Either Trump is implicated in all of this, or he isn’t. If he is, the consequences are understandably disastrous: We elected a president that turned out to be a foreign agent and a traitor – or, at minimum, was so careless that his actions amounted to treason.

But even if Trump isn’t implicated, his most senior staff already are. Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman, was a Putin agent. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser, was a Turkish agent. Jeff Sessions, current U.S. Attorney General, lied about Russian contacts. The list can go on. And, frankly, the consequences are equally disastrous: We elected a president whose senior staff seems to be – unbeknownst to him – packed with foreign agents and traitors. In this case, Trump might not be as personally shaken, but the damage done to the institutions of American democracy are equally great.

So, the question is, can American democracy survive this bloodbath?

The credibility and integrity of these institutions are under unprecedented threat. Not only are the very loyalties of our chief executive in question, but the damage wrought upon the bureaucratic apparatuses that run the federal government smoothly is also considerable. Rather than act as a professionalized, technocratic moderating force for Trump, his bureaucracy – or, at least, the appointed, high-ranking, non-civil service segment of it – seems to be acting more like an extension of its buffoonish, incompetent commander-in-chief. Thousands of key executive positions remain unfilled not because Trump’s appointments are being blocked, but because he has “no intention” of making the appointments. And where appointments have been made, they seem to be made with a deliberate attempt to undercut the normal functioning of the government: Scott Pruitt, a man who does not believe in climate change, was appointed to head the EPA; Rick Perry, the dumber version of George W. Bush who finished college with a 2.2 GPA in animal husbandry, was put in charge of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, replacing a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

Of course, we cannot pin all blame on Trump. However the Trump administration ends, it will end with the institutions of American democracy in shambles – more so than ever before. But, as many must secretly admit in defeat – they are already in shambles. Faith in American government and institutions has been falling steadily, and Congress’s approval ratings have not been above 30 percent since 2009. That is not on Trump. In fact, that disillusionment with government is likely one of the factors that put Trump in the White House to begin with; polling reveals that of the 63 percent of the country did not think Trump had the right temperament to be president, 20 percent voted for him anyway. That’s a staggering 27 percent of Trump voters (and nearly 13 percent of the electorate) who knew full well that the man did not have the temperament for the job, but still voted for him. This kind of behavior suggests an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the status quo – in other words, the established, institutional forces of government. For so many voters to vote for a candidate knowing that he is not going to be able to perform competently, there must already be a staggeringly large degree of distrust and, frankly, disdain, for the way American democracy is currently being exercised.

These institutions, and even democracy itself, do not exist in the abstract. Laws, rules, norms – all these things exist not for their own sake, but because they are meant to serve the people. And until our institutions can earn the trust of the American people again by genuinely serving their interests and helping them in their time of need, and by providing them with real solutions in the face of stagnant wages, historically high prices in housing and education and a general atmosphere of malaise and discontent, rather than continue to exist in some self-congratulatory stupor of inactivity, there appears to be little reason why any administration, with or without Trump at its head, could gain legitimacy again.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A letter to my community https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/16/a-letter-to-my-community/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/16/a-letter-to-my-community/#respond Thu, 16 Mar 2017 07:21:08 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1124872 What really disturbs me is that, after all of this, there are so many who think mine is an experience that is worth repeating.

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To my community:

I graduated from Arcadia High School in 2015 before coming here to Stanford. Unlike what the stereotypes may suggest, I was not the valedictorian. I was not even the salutatorian. In fact, because of my last name, I sat at the very back row during graduation.

Unlike what stereotypes may suggest, my high school career was the very opposite of smooth sailing. For every A that I did get, I had at least one panic attack in the process of getting it, and for every A that I didn’t get (and there were quite a few), I had many more. I’ve had the urge to jump, and even more often, I’ve felt too down to even take that modicum of effort. There were entire stretches of months at a time where I would not get anything more than four-hour naps on non-weekends. There were weekends when I couldn’t even guarantee that.

It’s so easy to glorify it: I could say that I was motivated, that I was ambitious, that I managed to balance, in admissions-speak, a “rigorous course load” with “meaningful extracurricular activities” — and there’s certainly a kernel of truth in all of those statements. But it is even more truthful to say that for almost all of high school, I was consistently on the brink of collapse, both academically and personally. There were no buffer zones. Even after every extension was taken, every comparatively small assignment skipped, everything was scheduled to the minute before the deadline (if this sounds like Stanford, I can only assure that you that it was far worse, and I hope that you might take my word for it).

For what it’s worth, I don’t regret these experiences. It was a valuable exercise in learning, and these are lessons about myself and in resilience that I don’t imagine I could learn quite as well any other way. But what really disturbs me is that, after all of this, there are so many who think mine is an experience that is worth repeating.

As a bit of a background, my high school was about 70 percent Asian-American, of whom the bulk were Chinese-American, and was home to a Chinese parents’ association whose most visible activity was to put on monthly seminars, in which speakers are called in to talk about the college admissions process. And often, the speakers were students themselves — well, that is, the handful of seniors every year that got admitted to the Ivies, Stanford, MIT and the like. And so, at some point during my senior year, I was told to turn my résumé into a PowerPoint slideshow and then present it (along with two admits of Ivy League schools) to a roomful of wild-eyed parents, who dutifully copied down everything in our presentation — the classes we took, the activities we participated in, the places we volunteered — as models of success for their own children to emulate. And that made me want to scream inside because mine is not an experience that I would like anyone to emulate. It may have ended desirably, but at what cost?

Throughout high school, concern for personal wellness was a non-starter. There was neither the energy in me to admit to what was a perceived failure, nor the time to take care of it in any meaningful way. So, my response was mostly to let it fester. I didn’t really begin to take care of myself mentally until I arrived at Stanford, at which point I was a frightened wreck. That was the cost for me, and I don’t want it to be that for anyone else.

Unfortunately, I also know that it’s a cost that many parents would be willing to accept — or at least wouldn’t mind minimizing as a side effect. And I understand their anxiety. The Asian-American kids in my community, although predominant wealthy, already have several strikes against them. Parents in my community often aren’t native speakers of English and are generally unfamiliar with the college admissions process. There is a dearth of social capital that many white kids take for granted due to the insularity of the immigrant community. Then there’s the profound discrimination that students of East Asian heritage face under affirmative action that favor white applicants over them (for example, studies have found that Asian-American applicants as a whole are treated negatively under affirmative action, despite a continuing legacy of disenfranchisement and discrimination, while whites are treated neutrally). And if you are among the minority in my community that are poor or if your first language is not English, then the odds are even more stacked against you.

In the current system we have, it does pay to “excel” and go to Stanford or Harvard or Penn, and to “excel” obviously has a price. But if someone is from a marginalized background, they must pay a steeper and more outrageous price to overcome obstacles that ultimately have their roots in an inherently unequal system. It’s by no means fair, but at the moment, an Asian-American student does need to work harder — statistically, at least — to “excel” than their white counterpart.

But I also know that this — what I went through — simply cannot become the norm (but when I presented in front of those parents that night, I knew I was playing an undeniable role in doing just that — normalizing suffering). I was lucky. I didn’t break when I was in high school, and thanks to the support that I was fortunate enough to receive here at Stanford, I didn’t break here, either. But in both places, I came dangerously close, and the consequences would have been predictably disastrous. That’s not a chance anyone should have to take, and that’s not what the price of excellence should ever have to be.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Our so-called administration https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/08/leaks/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/03/08/leaks/#respond Wed, 08 Mar 2017 08:25:14 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1124561 So far, it appears that this administration is failing even more than Trump himself.

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Last week, President Donald Trump gave his address to a joint session of Congress and garnered immediate critical acclaim for being, as the “Washington Post” puts it, “surprisingly presidential.”

Of course, in typical Trump-ian speed, this honeymoon period lasted all of two days before Jeff Sessions was revealed to have perjured himself — but that’s another story for another time. Of course, for someone like Trump, acting presidential for any amount of time is a profound accomplishment, but in our singular focus on any minutia of Trump acting like the president, we have ignored something even more important — when is the Trump administration going to start acting like an administration?

In our (understandable) desire to paint Trump as a buffoon, we seem to forget the fact that there is supposed to be an entire administration of supposedly capable people whose entire jobs are to assist and counsel him and prevent him from consistently making a fool of himself. And, so far, it appears that this administration is failing even more than Trump himself is.

Take the Sessions scandal, for example. On the morning of March 2, Sessions voluntarily offered to recuse himself from ongoing investigations about Russia. But this did not stop White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer from declaring, on the contrary, that “there’s nothing to recuse himself [from]” a mere hours later. Then, at 2:30 p.m., hours after Spicer’s statement, Trump parroted Spicer and personally expressed “total” confidence in Sessions. But, not an hour after this, Sessions called a press conference where he announced that he would recuse himself. And, to top it all off, word leaked that Trump was apparently furious that Sessions did recuse himself.

The conflicting messages, especially the fact that they are being broadcast in such close proximity to one another, indicates a grotesque level of incompetence. The amount of conflict within the Trump administration is, simply put, astounding. The presidential administration is referred to as such — that is, as a singular unit — because it’s supposed to function like one. Here, however, this so-called administration is the exact opposite. In fact, it more closely resembles two small children trying to lie to their parents, both of  whom can’t get their alibis straight.

And it’s not as if this was some one-off incident. In what can only be characterized as an incident of déjà vu, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, the previous Trump administration official beleaguered for his Russia ties, resigned a mere 7 hours after the administration defiantly declared that Flynn had Trump’s “full confidence.”

But, at least these messages, conflicting as they might be, were voluntarily put out by the administration, because most of the information we get about the Trump team now comes from leaks. As Vox points out, “the worst things [we’re reading] about Trump [are coming] from his own aides.” And, indeed, the leaks are so frequent that even news about the meeting Sean Spicer called to try to stop the flow of leaks was almost immediately leaked. The fact that there is such an alarming willingness of insiders to leak information indicates a tremendous amount of unrest and disunity within the administration (which would explain the conflicting messages). The administration’s utterly fruitless attempts to curb these leaks, once again, point to an alarming level of incompetence and disorganization.

But, that last point is also not surprising given that the Trump administration is painfully understaffed. As of the end of February, there are still nearly 2,000 positions left unfilled, not because of Democrats blocking nominations, but because Trump has failed to nominate anyone at all. That number becomes even more disturbing when one examines the details. For example, of all the hundreds of countries of the world, Trump has currently nominated ambassadors for just six (China, Israel, the U.K., Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal), which would be less worrisome if Trump hadn’t also dismissed all of the Obama-appointed ambassadors upon taking office. (So, yes, there has not been a U.S. ambassador to, say, France, for almost three months.)

These criticisms don’t even touch on any disagreements on policy issues. We are past that at this point. The simple fact of the matter is the Trump administration is in such disarray that even with all policy and partisan considerations aside, it is still failing on account of objectively lacking a basic level of bureaucratic competence. And, frankly, that itself should be disqualifier enough for the Trump administration.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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No, your tuition is not funding Hamas https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/22/no-your-tuition-is-not-funding-hamas/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/22/no-your-tuition-is-not-funding-hamas/#respond Wed, 22 Feb 2017 08:45:33 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1123440 This Monday, the Review again assumed its role as Stanford’s instigator-in-chief by publishing a wildly sensationalist article, insinuating that our Stanford tuition dollars are funding Hamas, the Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood that governs the Gaza Strip.

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This Monday, the Review again assumed its role as Stanford’s instigator-in-chief by publishing a wildly sensationalist article insinuating that our Stanford tuition dollars are funding Hamas, the Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood that governs the Gaza Strip.

Its argument — as is often the case with its more clickbait-y, sensationalist pieces — leaves much to be desired.

Before we go any further, I must first make an important point regarding the nature of Hamas. In the article, the Review calls Hamas “a genocidal terrorist organization” that is “evil, pure and simple,” as if that assertion is an unchallenged and well-accepted fact when it is decidedly not. Whether Hamas is a terrorist organization is not at all settled, but rather a matter of ongoing debate.

For example, the EU does not recognize it as such, and neither does Turkey, America’s largest ally in the Middle East. The U.S. government does consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization, but this is, after all, the same government that once put civil rights leader John Lewis on the no-fly list and still doesn’t recognize the KKK as a terrorist organization. The point being, the classification “terrorist” itself is not particularly meaningful — what really matters is what these organizations we talk about actually do. And when it comes to Hamas, yes, it has committed a great deal of atrocities that no one ought to overlook. But, it also operates hospitals, schools and welfare programs. Hamas’s record, much like the rest of the world, is not black and white, and it’s extremely irresponsible of the Review, a publication supposedly dedicated to “[promote] independent thought,” to simply ignore all nuance and, in comically childish fashion, label Hamas as “pure evil.” It is important that we talk about Hamas, including its atrocities. But, to simply label it the equivalent of the devil incarnate and then proceed to categorically dismiss any organization with any ties to it howsoever “sickening” is not only absurd, but massively counterproductive to creating actual dialogue.

But, more importantly, the allegation that Stanford’s branch of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is somehow financially tied to Hamas is comically false and demonstrably so by the facts presented by the Review’s own article. The Review’s proof that SJP funds Hamas is essentially the following: The SJP receives funding from American Muslims for Palestine, a group that, according to the article, has members who were previously part of a now-defunct organization that once donated funds to Hamas.

The first time I read through this argument, I could only react to the tenuousness of it all. But, upon closer examination, I realized that nowhere in this entire narrative that the Review itself wrote shows the SJP giving the money to anyone at all. At best, this narrative accuses that SJP has received money from organizations that are potentially affiliated with Hamas. Even with the most generous interpretation imaginable, nothing in this article’s narrative (provided by the Review as its best reasoning in support of their position) even remotely proves the insane, sensationalistic argument that SJP — much less your Stanford tuition dollars — are in any way being used to fund Hamas.

The thing that truly shocks me is that, as I said multiple times already, all of this is based strictly on the Review’s article itself. I did not do any outside research or even click on any of the article’s external links to corroborate the Review’s sources, information and assertions. I gave the article the most generous reading possible by simply taking the Review’s word for it. And yet, its argument still has a logical hole so big that its Trump-loving funder could drive his motorcade through it.

In putting out an article with conclusions that are not even supported by its own facts, the Review has hit a new low. For starters, this article is the epitome of shoddy journalism. By sanctioning its publication, the Review is just once again proving that it is more interested in stirring up controversy with sensationalist clickbait than doing what it claims to do: “Promote debate about campus and national issues that are otherwise not represented by traditional publications.” And that’s quite a shame because Stanford, as a liberal bastion, does need strong and independent voices, but the Review just isn’t doing right by its own mission statement. 

But more importantly, the level of misrepresentation and slander against SJP in this article makes it, frankly, borderline libel. Unfortunately, this will likely not be the last time the Review tries to defame pro-Palestine groups on campus. I can only hope that the next time it does it, it’ll have some facts to back it up.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The economy is not doing well https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/15/the-economy-is-not-doing-well/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/15/the-economy-is-not-doing-well/#respond Wed, 15 Feb 2017 09:54:48 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1123064 The economy, to most, is more a reflection of their livelihood and how they are doing financially. And Americans are not doing well.

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Going into the election last November, I noticed something extremely interesting about Stanford.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that most college campuses are liberal and anti-Trump. It’s the nature of the young demographic — no problem there. But of course, not every anti-Trump person is the same, and not every Clinton voter is the same. One thing that struck me about Stanford’s particular breed of Clinton voters is that, well, they are comparatively very, very pro-Clinton.

This bothered me quite a bit, partly for personal reasons, as I was decidedly not pro-Clinton at all. More importantly, it bothered me because it struck me as particularly odd that (at least from what I observed) Stanford’s support for Clinton was so unusually strong in comparison to her support among young people elsewhere.

I had suspicions and theories about why this was, but the answer finally hit me around the time Obama left office when one of my friends made an off-hand comment in the voice of the outgoing president:

“No big deal, all I did was fix the economy and make it boom again.”

I didn’t say it at the time, but I thought to myself at that moment:

What are you talking about?

From a purely statistical and economics standpoint, I can certainly see where that person was coming from. The stock market is hitting all time highs, economic indicators are looking good, and of course, the unemployment rate is below the mythical five percent mark, which is, by some explanation that I am not qualified to give, an indicator of full employment. On paper, this all looks very good.

But what good do all those statistics actually do?

My knowledge of economics is shaky at best, but it’s still probably more sound than that of most Americans. In a 2005 study, 58 percent of adults and almost three quarters of high school students surveyed did not understand what it means when the GDP increased (that more goods are being produced). When we here at Stanford draw weird curves on a graph and use calculus to quantify economic concepts, we must understand that we are as holed-up in the ivory tower as humanly imaginable. Most Americans do not think of the economy in such abstract terms. The economy, to most, is more a reflection of their livelihood and how they are doing financially.

And Americans are not doing well. Wages have been stagnant for a half-century, even though Americans work more and vacation less than anyone else in the developed world. Americans are below average when it comes to health, and life expectancies are actually on the decline. Younger Americans are growing up to be poorer than their parents… I could go on, but I think it is not a massive surprise that the benefits of this so-called recovery (which the Right is unfortunately correct in calling it the slowest since the Great Depression) are not getting to average Americans. For the majority of Americans, there was no recovery, period. And for many Americans, especially those in economically depressed areas far away from us “coastal elites,” there isn’t even a recovery to speak of; that would require the existence of a boom-bust cycle, whereas many of these communities have been in economic freefall for decades now.

This is not to dismiss Obama’s legacy altogether. Indeed, looking at some of the rosy economic indicators, it is plain that he has done well in many regards. Simultaneously, it’s also not a dismissal of economics as a science. It just means that while we recognize that legacy (and the economic data that illustrate it), we must also realize that the economy is by no means back on track and that most Americans have most certainly not returned to economic prosperity.

And this recognition is important because people know their finances. When we on the Left declare “recovery” or “the economy is doing well,” those declarations have implications for people who know full well that they’re not doing well — that their finances have not recovered. And when we insist that all is well and use abstract, rarified data to dismiss the economic struggles of hundreds of millions of hardworking Americans, it becomes unsurprising why animosity towards the out-of-touch “liberal elite” and dismissal of facts and data would become so rampant.

Because why wouldn’t it? When we dismiss real people and their lived experiences and struggles in favor of numbers on a piece of paper, what do we expect?

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Not mob violence, but a show of force https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/08/not-mob-violence-but-a-show-of-force/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/08/not-mob-violence-but-a-show-of-force/#respond Wed, 08 Feb 2017 10:16:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122631 Simply allowing the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon to do and say whatever they please in the name of liberal values like “free speech” is not the answer.

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If one can say anything about the political climate of this campus, it is undoubtedly that there isn’t much goodwill towards the present presidential administration, to say the least. But the question of the day is, how can we students — and more broadly, a now thoroughly disempowered left — channel the opposition?

If nothing else, the events that transpired last week at Berkeley were a chilling reminder of just how much opposition there is to be channeled — and as a note, I’d just like to reiterate that the student protesters were peaceful, and the violence was carried out by outside agitators. But, more relevantly, thousands of overworked Cal students turning out on a weeknight to disrupt the appearance of a bigoted troll like Milo Yiannopoulos (whose entire fanbase is probably dwarfed by this protest alone) just goes to show how strong people’s sentiments are and, frankly, how much anger there is at the Trump administration and the things Trump and his sycophants stand for.

But how should that anger be expressed?

This has troubled me (and many of my friends) profoundly these past few weeks. On the one hand, I must admit that I don’t really care for Milo, and there’s some part of me that — regrettably — would not be bothered by his demise. And of course, I understand that these macabre thoughts of mine are hardly the answer. Violence, especially mob violence, is utterly undesirable. In the words of John Milton, “For what can war, but endless war, still breed?” Violence begets more violence, and that’s hardly a solution in these trying times.

But, I also want to say unequivocally that simply allowing the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon to do and say whatever they please in the name of liberal values like “free speech” is not the answer. Our laws should be used to protect the oppressed, downtrodden and vulnerable, and when we use them to protect the oppressors, justice becomes a farce. And we do have mechanisms that would allow for lawful interventions against the kind of hate speech that white nationalists espouse. Free speech is not absolute: You might have heard of the exemption to the First Amendment colloquially called “shouting fire in a crowded theatre,” meaning that speech which might cause imminent harm — for example, white nationalists inciting violence against African Americans — can be restricted. And when they do incite violence, our response should not just be moral outrage, it should be a resounding and forceful demand for their arrest and prosecution under the laws of this country.

Knock the crap out of them.” — Donald Trump, regarding protesters at his rallies. (Feb. 1, 2016)

Did we demand Trump’s arrest? No. We just talked about how outrageous his statements were.

And we can’t simply allow the far-right to simply do what they please in the hopes that the ensuing moral backlash will somehow bring victory come 2018 or 2020 — to even be able to suggest such a thing is an act of immense privilege. When the Muslim ban was implemented, real lives were being affected, and for those people, they could not wait for the next election — they needed immediate relief. And immediate relief was supposed to be on the way: Fewer than two days after the Muslim ban was implemented, federal judge Ann Donnelly ordered not only for its immediate cessation, but for U.S. Marshals to take “those actions … necessary to enforce … this order.

But did we demand that armed U.S. Marshals be sent to JFK to arrest federal agents who were (at that point) unlawfully detaining innocent travelers? No. We once again just talked about how outrageous the ban was, and it would almost another week before the ban would be lifted.

(And keep in mind, we once deployed hundreds of U.S. Marshals in full combat gear just to escort the University of Mississippi’s first Black student to and from class.)

This current administration threatens the very fabric of this country, and we must resist in the most vigorous way possible, and part of that is to hold Trump and his sycophants accountable for these breaches using not just words, but law enforcement agents with their guns drawn whenever possible. The left cannot try to remain polite. If the Trump administration continues to try to circumvent direct orders from federal courts, and if the so-called “alt-right” continues to spew out incendiary language that threatens the immediate safety of our fellow Americans, as Trump did at some of his rallies, our response cannot merely be outrage. Instead, it should be an unequivocal:

Lock. Them. Up.

Because that’s exactly the kind of justice they demanded during their own campaign, no?

Day 20 of 1461. Resist.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Moving beyond moral outrage https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/01/moving-beyond-moral-outrage/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/02/01/moving-beyond-moral-outrage/#respond Wed, 01 Feb 2017 09:25:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1122251 When Trump proposed his 20% tax on Mexican imports to defray the cost of a border wall, my parents called me because they had a question about the proposal: “Won’t this make our groceries more expensive?”

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When Trump proposed his 20 percent tax on Mexican imports to defray the cost of a border wall, my parents called me because they had a question about the proposal:

“Won’t this make our groceries more expensive?”

(I’m no expert when it comes to produce supply chains, but given that a large amount of the fruits and vegetables that my family — and millions of other Los Angeles families — buys are imported from Mexico, it would appear that this move will indeed raise grocery prices.)

I was, in all honesty, taken aback by the question. I had expected their question to be something about the importance of border security, or about the efficacy of the wall, or even about the larger question of what America’s stance towards immigration ought to be, because these were the sorts of questions that were bouncing around here at Stanford.

But to my lower-middle class parents, all of those questions are comparatively irrelevant. Sure, America’s increasingly hostile attitude towards immigrants will not bode well for them in the long run, but that is not a pressing issue. But a potential 20 percent increase in their food budget, on the other hand, is a cause for immediate alarm and concern. That was the real life-or-death issue.

And all of a sudden, I felt profoundly out of touch.

To be absolutely clear, Trump’s divisive, bigoted policies towards immigrant and minority communities are reprehensible and have dealt profound harm to countless people and families in this country, which is why they must be vigorously opposed at every turn. We resist Trump today to stop his policies from hurting our brothers and sisters, and that is the most pertinent and salient task at hand.

But we cannot rebuild the left based on moral outrage alone. The thousands of protesters at airports all around the country are a beautiful sight to behold, but they are just one piece to a much larger puzzle. After all, we just had an election, and the left was defeated resoundingly. We may attribute that defeat to any number of factors (bigotry being one of them), but that doesn’t excuse the left from attempting to improve. (And let’s not forget, bigotry is worsened during difficult economic times.)

When my parents asked me about their grocery bill, the ideological vacuity of the Democratic party hit me like a brick. The rhetoric of inclusivity and diversity is important, but it cannot become the mainstays of a party (as it did with the Democrats last election cycle) in a country with profoundly pressing concerns that demand immediate and decisive remedy.

In a country where wages have been stagnant for more than a half-century, the percentage of children growing up in poverty is trending up, an opioid epidemic is killing over 30,000 people per year (more than double the number of deaths resulting from gun violence), etc., etc., etc.

To pretend that the country does not need robust economic change is both elitist and self-deceiving. Indicators for economic growth like the Dow Jones index may have looked rosy both now under Trump and under Obama before him, but that cannot be used to hide the fact that this hasn’t materialized into tangible benefits for most Americans.

Under these circumstances, as delightful and important as the idea of a diverse, inclusive, welcoming America may be, maintaining that America is simply not the priority for millions of struggling Americans who must contend with a broken system that has not delivered them the good life that America promises. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t believe that idea isn’t important.

For example, my parents caring about their grocery bill more than the implications of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric doesn’t mean they are not also perturbed by the latter. It’s simply a reflection of the sad fact that until they (and millions of Americans like them) can be assured of their survival and well-being (that is, the cost of food does not suddenly skyrocket and become unaffordable), every other issue is unfortunately a non-starter.

And until the left can find and sell America on an economic policy that provides constructive solutions that will actually address these real problems facing millions of real Americans, all the beautiful rhetoric and celebrity star power and Trump-fueled anger in the world won’t be enough to create an enduring political movement that can stop the likes of Trump.

***

Today, we watch and protest the Trump administration with (well-deserved) anger, horror, sadness and frustration. But this administration will one day depart — maybe in four years, maybe in two, maybe tomorrow. It matters very little when it leaves. Because when it does, it will have to be the left’s turn to showcase to the country what we have to offer, and why what we are offering is superior.

You might scoff at this suggestion and say, “Well, of course we’ll be better! For starters, we’re not bigots!” And you’d be right. A non-bigot is undoubtedly better than a bigot. But if that is the only substantive improvement we can offer, it would be a shamefully low bar indeed.

Day 13 of 1461. Resist.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Do not despair https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/25/do-not-despair/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/25/do-not-despair/#respond Wed, 25 Jan 2017 10:09:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121902 In its history and at its heart today, America is still the same white-supremacist empire that we’ve always known.

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For some reason, the Trump inauguration didn’t really register as much for me emotionally as I thought it would.

I thought it would be many of the same things I felt on Election Day: anger, grief, disappointment, hopelessness, despair, frustration…

But I don’t feel that. In fact, ever since the election, I’ve felt increasingly small amounts of that to the point where now, I feel an almost-strange sense of peace.

If you have even a slight sense of my proclivities, you know that there isn’t much goodwill in me towards this administration. And when it comes to the policies this administration is attempting to implement, I’m as ready to rip out my hair as the next guy. But the general sense of impending doom has left me.

Because really, what did we expect?

In its history and at its heart today, America is still the same white-supremacist empire that we’ve always known. It’s the country that committed genocide against indigenous peoples, bought and sold and tortured slaves, colonized countries, fought jingoistic wars, raped and massacred civilians, brutalized protesters, mistreated workers (even children), subjugated minorities, toppled other countries’ democratically elected leaders, propped up other countries’ brutal tyrants, bombed other countries indiscriminately, operated concentration camps, given syphilis to healthy people as part of secret human medical experiments (feel free to Google any of these if you dare)… need I go on?

And sure, we are not still doing all of these things anymore (although the continuity of some of these things should very much alarm you), but even the things in that list that we have ceased to do are still in our (sometimes very recent) past, and it’s not a past that we can simply pretend does not exist.

So why are we surprised when it comes back?

And the point of this is not to say that we should set low expectations for America. It’s simply a matter of acknowledging that Trump is not necessarily as much an anomaly as we think, and that he is actually very much part of a regrettably dark undercurrent within the American cultural milieu that has been with us before this country was founded.

Trump’s rise should be met not with shock, but with at best a knowing, sorrowful shame. Racism, bigotry, arrogant sense of endless empire — these are not things that we are proud of, but are things that are part of our American DNA. They’re part of an undercurrent that will, to what is supposed to be the shock of nobody, rise up in a wave of reactionary fury.

To feel bad, then, because we expected the country to be better, somewhat misses the point.

It is unreasonable to expect this country to somehow just get better on its own, but it sure is tempting. The admittedly great progress this country has made combined with the ever-pervasive narrative of American exceptionalism have conjured up in our minds an image of a country that, while not perfect, is on a purposeful, perpetually forward and inevitable path of improvement towards eventual perfection — a country that will somehow just naturally progress towards a more perfect union.

Which is absurd.

The simple nature of inertia means that things don’t just start moving on their own. What is natural is for things to remain as they are. America doesn’t just naturally get better. This country began as a white-supremacist plutocracy, and what would have been natural would be for it to remain that way. Everything else takes effort.

Before there was Emancipation and the 13th Amendment, there were brutal suppressions of slave revolts. Before the Civil Rights movement succeeded, Reconstruction failed. When Dr. King said that “the arc of the moral universe… bends towards justice,” he didn’t mean that it would bend on its own, without the tireless work and struggle of people like him.

So there is no reason to be disappointed- – there was never some inherent inevitability to us electing our first female president last November. American progress is not an inevitable linear narrative; it’s a story of struggle against oppression.

And that oppression is looming on the horizon, and it will bring with it a dreadful four years to come. If the past few months (and years, for that matter) have been any indication, the Trump administration will implement policies that will make life for women, immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, queer people and poor people a living hell.

And that sense of doom is much harder to control or remove; unlike our malleable expectations and disappointment, the ascendancy of this new president is no longer within our control.

However, if there is one thing that could alleviate our sense of doom, it must be the knowledge that if this administration plans to injure us, it will have to go through us first — the knowledge that we will resist at every turn, to fight for ourselves and our fellow Americans.

A more perfect union is not an inevitability, but neither should it be our defeat. The path before us is hard, but freedom is never easily gained. Those who came before us and our brothers and sisters around the world have fought and struggled for their freedom. Now, perhaps it’s time for us to earn ours, too, and I know we can.

Day 6 of 1461. Resist.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Participation trophies https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/18/participation-trophies/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/18/participation-trophies/#respond Wed, 18 Jan 2017 09:27:18 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121518 It’s interesting that millennials are characterized as entitled when, for all intents and purposes, we are not entitled to anything.

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The trope about how every child gets a trophy at sporting games just for participating is now long among the cliched staple of anecdotes that supposedly demonstrate how millennials are entitled brats.

It’s a narrative repeated over and over again to somehow prove that we millennials are bad people or, more specifically, why we might be (choose any combination of the following) greedy, self-important, self-obsessed, fragile, arrogant, unfit for the “real world” — and the list goes on.

In other words, there’s a substantial group of people — chiefly baby boomers — who believe that the fact that you received little plastic statuettes from your little league without necessarily having a winning record is somehow reason enough to demonstrate your unworthiness.

Which is rich, coming from the generation whose entire existence has been one giant participation trophy compared to that of the millennials. In fact, the boomers have had a running start.

During their first years as adults, annual cost of attendance at a four-year public school was $1,051 for the oldest boomers (Class of 1968) and $3,403 for the youngest (Class of 1986). These costs have since ballooned about tenfold by the 2006-07 school year to $12,805 and $28,896, respectively, even after accounting for inflation.

This is compounded by the simple fact of the matter is that a college degree is now essentially prerequisite to financial stability, even if it means taking out tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars (U.S. average is now $30,100 at the time of graduation) in loans to earn it. In other words, a high school diploma — which might have been sufficient during the boomers’ youth — will no longer cut it.

And even then, millennials still face an astonishing 45 percent underemployment rate, which makes actually landing a decent-paying job — especially one in your field of study — far from a certainty. They are also woefully underpaid compared to boomers. The average young worker in 2012 was paid about 58 percent of the average wage in the country, compared to young boomers in 1980, who were paid about 82 percent of it — in other words, almost 50 percent higher wages.

And, unlike the boomers and their prosperous times, millennials have had to navigate all of this — at the early stages of their careers, no less — in the midst of one of the greatest global economic catastrophes in human record.

With all this in mind, it’s interesting that millennials are characterized as entitled when, for all intents and purposes, we are not entitled to anything.

And this statement is quite literal. We live in a political era dominated by talk of cutting “entitlement” programs; beyond what we’ve already discussed, even government programs that boomers take for granted — Social Security, Medicare, and, well, free public schools — are now on the cutting board. And even our very being is threatened by the impending cataclysm that climate change is likely to wrought.

The simple fact of the matter (which critics of this generation will never seem to accept) is that millennials have been dealt a remarkably awful hand — in fact, the most awful in American history in economic terms, since millennials are the first generation in history to earn less than their parents.

For the average millennial born in the 1980s, the chance that they will out-earn their parents is less than half, which means that only a minority of millennials — who, whether by circumstance or hard work, out-compete most of their peers — could be winners of this economic game.

However, for the oldest boomers — those born in the late 1940s — the odds of out-earning their parents was above 80 percent. That is, just by virtue of their very existence, boomers are already almost guaranteed to be winners of the game.

Which sounds a lot like a participation trophy to me.

***

Should we stop giving kids participation trophies? Well, according to the people who keep referencing the cliche, it will do a lot of good. And I, for one, will be happy to hand back the certificate of participation I got in seventh grade for a thing I drew, and even reimburse the $5 gift card to In-N-Out that came with that certificate.

But is that really the best use of anyone’s time? Is there literally nothing else we could be doing besides taking tokens of affirmation from children?

I am not qualified to comment on the psychological impacts of participation trophies on children, but I do know a red herring when I see one. The way millennials are often portrayed in the media is a quintessential example of how groups of people become identified as villainous “Others” who are somehow different from — and less worthy than — the in-group.

By essentially associating millennials with whiny children through these improbable anecdotes, millennial-bashing commentators are effectively delegitimizing the unique and difficult challenges facing an entire generation. And as this narrative is repeated again and again, it becomes increasingly harder for anyone to take millennials seriously.

Which is a tremendous shame, because we millennials are not the “Others.” We may be young people now, but as time passes, we will become just plain old people, and our problems will become America’s problems, and our prosperity (or lack thereof) will become America’s prosperity. If we wait until then to recognize and legitimize the problems we face, it will sadly be too late.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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A New Year’s resolution https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/12/a-new-years-resolution/ https://stanforddaily.com/2017/01/12/a-new-years-resolution/#respond Thu, 12 Jan 2017 09:52:05 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1121312 I know that the New Year's resolution is supposed to be cheerful, happy, uplifting, hopeful… But at this point, I can’t say any of these things of those things. 2016 was a tough political year for many. There was Brexit, the rise of Trump, the travesty in Syria, instability in Turkey and, perhaps most worryingly, the sight of the post-WWII global order that had been so delicately crafted seemingly just shattering into pieces before our very eyes. It's gotten so bad that John McCain, of all people, is warning us about the “unraveling” of western civilization.

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I know that the New Year’s resolution is supposed to be cheerful, happy, uplifting, hopeful … But at this point, I can’t say any of these things of those things. 2016 was a tough political year for many. There was Brexit, the rise of Trump, the travesty in Syria, instability in Turkey and, perhaps most worryingly, the sight of the post-WWII global order that had been so delicately crafted seemingly just shattering into pieces before our very eyes. It’s gotten so bad that John McCain, of all people, is warning us about the “unraveling” of Western civilization.

And, the worst part is, all of these problems that defined 2016 are long-term problems. They are not going away in 2017 – in fact, they’re just getting started. As the new year commences, we here in America will witness the inauguration of a man poised to violate the Constitution – a document for which he has shown flagrant disregard – within days (if not hours) of that inauguration. And he will be advised by a cabinet already so mired in controversy and conflicts of interest that it’s making the Bush administration look, in retrospect, like a hippie commune.

And I have no delusions of what my – or anyone else’s – future will look like in this America. I say this as women stand to lose their right to their body as the GOP has already pledged to cut Planned Parenthood; people of color stand to lose their equal standing and equal personhood as white supremacists ascend to important cabinet posts; the freedom of religion stands to be all but shredded as Trump continues to stand by his promise for a Muslim registry and poor people stand to lose the meager remnants of the welfare state (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps) that keeps them from literally starving to death on the street.

And this grim situation has, on multiple occasions, made me want to quit – stop paying attention to politics, stop writing, unsubscribe from news alerts. I’ve cursed myself for being so engrossed in politics that even when it causes me mostly grief and anger, I cannot even extricate myself from it. But despite these moments of weakness, I know capitulation is not an option for anyone who finds themselves opposed to the policies of this incoming administration or disturbed by the increasing chaos of our world.

When The Daily Show returned on air for the first time since the 9/11 attacks, Jon Stewart delivered a tear-filled monologue, telling his audience why he “grieves, but does not despair.” And one particular thing he says transcends the circumstances:

“Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these … people from all over the country, rebuilding – that’s extraordinary. And that’s why we have already won – they can’t – it’s light, it’s democracy. They can’t shut that down.”

The new administration, in my eyes, is here to destroy. They are here to destroy the values that I – and, I know, a great number of my fellow Americans – hold dear: tolerance and inclusiveness – of people being judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; freedom and the pursuit of happiness – to have freedom over what you say, what you do, what you study, who you love; compassion – the idea that we care for and respect our brothers and sisters and that wherever that star-spangled banner flies proudly in the wind, we take care of our own 

In a more innocent time, I used to think that these are unshakeable American values that would never die. I was naive and wrong. These values are at risk, and they are on the brink of destruction. And the only option we have is to not despair. The only option we have is to fight back.

And this isn’t about saving Obamacare or getting a better budget deal – this fight transcends politics, it’s about America’s heart and soul. When I hear the word America, what I don’t want to think of is the ghost-white robes of the Ku Klux Klan, which I’ve already seen entirely too much.

When I hear the word America, I want to think of the words of Dr. King, or of the room of people I was naturalized with, waving their American flags as citizens for the very first time, or of that poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. That’s the America I know and love, and that’s the America all of us need to stand up and fight for in this new year. And that’s my New Year’s resolution: to fight for that America to the best of my ability.

And if I get a wish, too, it’d just be that I wish we’ll be all right.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.  

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Fidel: an obituary https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/30/fidel-an-obituary/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/30/fidel-an-obituary/#respond Wed, 30 Nov 2016 08:34:20 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1120509 But, at the occasion of his death, one must not forget also the great number of accomplishments that Fidel and his revolution has brought to Cuba.

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Fidel Castro, former President of Cuba, leader of the Cuban Revolution and international anti-imperialist icon, passed on November 25, 2016 at age 90.

As with any man – especially one who has passed such a long life, Fidel has had failures and made mistakes. At the time of his death, I am sure there will be celebrations, joyous calls of “libertad,” and a resurgence of the flood of criticisms – much of which will probably be justified – that he has received over the more than six decades he has spent at the center of public attention.

But, at the occasion of his death, one must not forget also the great number of accomplishments that Fidel and his revolution has brought to Cuba. The island began as a repressive, plutocratic, and racist (even the president was barred from entering certain nightclubs because he was not white) U.S. satellite state whose economy was largely dominated by sugar production and whose people lived in a state of grotesque wealth and income inequality.

The revolution’s successes in combatting these issues cannot be ignored. The world’s most ambitious literacy campaign eliminated illiteracy at breakneck speeds. The Cuban education system – free for all citizens at every level, including university – is the envy of the world, and beats out those of other Latin American countries by a country mile. Its student-to-teacher ratio of 12:1 puts even America to shame. Its healthcare system – also free for all citizens – is similarly world-class, with one of the highest life expectancies in the Western Hemisphere and an infant mortality rate that is lower than that of the U.S. The government stamped out institutionalized racism in every level of society. The country has also become a leader in environmental protection, with the World Wildlife Fund reporting in 2006 that it has become the world’s first and only country to attain sustainable development, while its sugar-based plantation economy has given way to the world’s greenest and most innovative agricultural scheme. And that’s just a brief overview.

And, all of this Cuba has done despite being placed under the most lengthy embargo – which the UN deemed a violation of international law  – in modern human history, an embargo which has done untold economic damage to the country. In spite of all this, Cuba nonetheless maintains one of the highest levels of human development in Latin America, second to only Chile by the tiniest of margins.

In the meantime, Fidel himself had survived more than 600 assassination attempts and had one of the longest political careers in human history.

Regardless of one’s opinion of him, there can be no doubt that Fidel was, by the very nature of things, a larger-than-life figure who lived a staggeringly influential life.

******

In 2008, Raúl Castro welcomed a delegation of Chinese exchange students to Cuba by singing – in shockingly excellent Chinese – the Maoist propaganda song “The East is Red,” which he claimed that he and his late brother Fidel learned in the 1950’s.

The reaction from the students was incredibly telling. After an initial moment of uncertainty and silence, they began to sing along – but it was clear that they were struggling to keep up with the lyrics. The song, having long become rare in the public sphere in China, was before their time.

That moment, like no other, conveys just exactly how old the Castros are. The Castro brothers are relics from a bygone era. When Fidel first came to power, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, only been three years before had Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev promised to bury the West. Sputnik was still a recent development. No man had yet been to space. And, most importantly, neither Reagan nor Thatcher were anywhere close to ascending to their countries’ highest offices.

To me, that was always what was unique about Fidel – that he and his Cuba has remained static, offering a lens into an age before neoliberalism – marketization and privatization and trickle-down economics – swept the world. Everywhere, people were told that gutting welfare and government services, privatizing public necessities like water, and deregulating big business – all in the name of stimulating economic growth – was the way to prosperity. And, with Fidel gone, I suppose that message is now entirely unanimous.

But it shouldn’t be. As divisive a figure as Fidel might be, the enviable social gains he has managed to forge cannot be overlooked. To be able to bring a small country like Cuba to the top of the world in education, health, and sustainability is no easy task, and the fact that Fidel could do this in spite of an embargo from his greatest trading partner puts us – supposedly the greatest country in the world – to shame. If Fidel could provide top-notch public education free of charge to every child – regardless of race or class – in Cuba, there is no excuse that the world’s greatest and richest democracy cannot. And, the fact of the matter is, we currently cannot. So, then, it does us absolutely no good to paint some simplistic, triumphant narrative for Fidel’s passing and move along. We have to admit facts, which is that despite its admittedly many flaws, Fidel’s Cuba has provided viable and even arguably superior policy alternatives to the global consensus which would behoove all of us to learn from – that even at this late juncture, maybe Fidel could still teach us a thing or two.

Atruena la razón en marcha:

es el fin de la opresión.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Reclaiming identity in Trump’s America https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/16/reclaiming-identity-in-trumps-america/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/16/reclaiming-identity-in-trumps-america/#respond Wed, 16 Nov 2016 08:57:54 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1119987 My existence here as a Chinese American man is unapologetic, and not subject to anyone’s permission or approval.

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About seven or eight years ago, my grandfather, who has never been to the States, asked me to do two things on our weekly Skype call. First, visit the railroad museum in Sacramento; second, to look around the railroads of California and be mindful of the contributions of our fellow countrymen — and my fellow Chinese-Americans.

Me, being the idiot I was in middle school, said something along the lines of: “Well, you can’t really see traces of the Chinese laborers along the rails anymore — and also, Sacramento is a dump.”

Not my finest moment.

But now, looking back, what my grandfather was actually insinuating behind those requests was perhaps the most poignant, powerful and assertive understanding of Chinese-American identity I’ve ever heard, which is made doubly impressive by the fact that the man had never actually been to America. It was strong, unapologetic and beautiful — and I can’t express how regretful I am for not being able to fully understand everything until very recently.

I never understood what it meant to be Chinese-American. It had always been easy to quietly submit to the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype that is constantly being projected onto me. Sure, it bothered me when it happens (when the clerk assumes you don’t speak English — when you stand in the U.S. citizens’ line at customs and get a weird glance — when they ask you “no, but where are you really from?” or compliment you on your lack of accent …) and sure, I fought it where I could, but most of the time, it was just a sigh followed by resigned acceptance.

And I never understood how wrong that stereotype was.

I never understood that I always had a right to be here. That I am not a foreigner in California, when it was my people who arrived here early, toiled and perished in slave-like conditions to build the railroad, to literally pave the way for everybody else to have a smooth and quick journey into this land. That it was the hands of Chinese-Americans who built this state and toiled in her fields to make it the golden state that we know and love today.

I guess my grandfather wanted me to see all this in person.

And because I didn’t, and because I didn’t learn or didn’t remember, I never understood that my presence here is no more foreign than that of anyone else (Native Americans exempt). That my existence here as a Chinese-American man is unapologetic and not subject to anyone’s permission or approval. That I am not a foreigner — that my people built California, and California is my country.

****

And it’s not just about me or Chinese-Americans in general. This is the Chinese-American story I discovered, and this is my identity. But all people of color in this country — who, as of November 8, 2016, find themselves suddenly feeling like they no longer have a place here — have some kind of story like this, a story which especially must not be forgotten in Trump’s America. The Chinese-American story is by no means special — it is a shared experience of all of us whose forefathers toiled, sweat and bled and gave their labor and travail to build this country and make it into what it is today. They worked her farms, paved her roads, bled in her wars, and it is these sacrifices that built America into what it is today. We and our ancestors before us built this country, and being here is our birthright, and one we must assert with strength and without apology to anyone who would dare deny the validity of our existence, our being and our American experience.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Another note on Standing Rock https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/09/another-note-on-standing-rock/ https://stanforddaily.com/2016/11/09/another-note-on-standing-rock/#respond Wed, 09 Nov 2016 08:42:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1119510 I am writing before the results come in. I have, at the time of this writing, no idea who will win the presidency, or the Senate, or even the House for that matter. But the election matters very little in the context of Standing Rock.

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This article won’t be about the election, unlike most of the things you’ll read today. I am writing before the results come in. I have, at the time of this writing, no idea who will win the presidency or the Senate or even the House for that matter. But the election matters very little in the context of Standing Rock.

Both presidential candidates support the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that threatens to pollute the drinking water of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. When asked about the election, one protester said:

I’m ashamed of them both.

Which is fair.

The protesters should be frustrated and angry; they have a right to be. Say what you will about the choices for president this time around, but while the two we’re left with might be different in a host of issues, they are certainly united when it comes to their dedication to economic growth.

Which doesn’t sound like a bad thing. What’s wrong with economic growth, you might ask?

Well, nothing, really.

But, conversely, what’s good about it?

Because really, what does economic growth itself really mean for most people? If you are an economist or statistician, then yes, the “economy” means something for you. You might look at some upward-trending line on a graph or some data point from this quarter that turned out larger than what your statistical model predicted and use those pieces of data to make broad assessments as to the condition of the national economy to see whether it is growing or shrinking, healthy or unhealthy, etc.

But, I think we can agree that this is not what most Americans think of when they hear “economic growth.” More often than not, it is actually just a proxy for measuring how people are doing money-wise. For example, if the economy is growing, you’d expect a higher wage or an easier time finding a job, more businesses starting up and everyone having more money in their pockets. And, if the economy is shrinking, you might expect the opposite — more people losing their jobs, stagnant wages and less money in your pocket.

It should come as no shock that this is what ordinary Americans actually care about: not the fluctuations on some abstract statistic like GDP, but their livelihoods — their financial stability, their ability to provide for their kids and their general quality of life. And that makes sense because these are what people actually want in life. And when people hear “economic growth,” what they’re thinking of (mostly correctly) is an increased standard and quality of life, and that’s why people generally believe that “economic growth” is a good thing. But that’s not always the case.

And that brings us to Standing Rock. And sure, you can argue that the project “generates economic growth” until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is, to do so requires an immense amount of blindness to the realities on the ground. “Economic growth” is not some end-all be-all justification for every negative consequence, and it certainly isn’t here. Because really, what is the so-called growth going to do for the Sioux?

Frankly, not a thing. The entire pipeline is projected to generate fewer than 40 permanent jobs according to the construction company’s own estimates, so even if the promised economic growth does happen (which is anybody’s guess), the Standing Rock Sioux don’t appear to gain anything from it. And, not only do they not get anything, their water becomes polluted, to add insult to injury.

In other words, with DAPL, not only do the Sioux not stand to gain anything, their livelihoods after the project actually look worse. And, if any economic growth does come about from DAPL, it will be at the expense of the Sioux.

So, the real question is, why would there be people who don’t understand why the protesters might be angry about this kind of arrangement?

Easy, because these are not the people who have to drink the contaminated water if the project is completed.

 

Contact Terence Zhao at zhaoy ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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