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Melissa Schwartzberg, the Silver Professor of Politics at New York University, brings a sharp analytical lens to the study of democratic institutions and their philosophical underpinnings. By bridging democratic theory with the classical tradition, Professor Schwartzberg studies how historical principles shape our contemporary political landscape. At a recent Salvatori Center conference focusing on Civic Constitutionalism and Epistemic Democracy, Caroline Bullock (CM ‘24) and Henry Long (CM ‘25) sat down with Professor Schwartzberg to discuss her book, Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule. Q: Could you start us off by describing your academic journey and how you ended up where you are today? Melissa Schwartzberg: I thought I wanted to be a journalist. I was the editor of my junior high school newspaper, my high school newspaper, my college newspaper. It was what I always wanted to do. I came from a family that did not have traditional educational pathways. And for me, I really wanted to have a traditional education. So I really wanted to study the classics, and I wanted to study Ancient Greek in particular. And then I got very involved in the presidential election in 1992, and got more and more interested in politics. So I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll also study political science. But then I took a course with a wonderful professor of political theory, Jack Knight, who now teaches at Duke. And then I thought, oh, I can actually bring my interest in politics with my interest in classics together. Q: What’s the main thesis of your book, Counting the Many: The Origins and Limits of Supermajority Rule? Melissa Schwartzberg: Well, the book has two parts. The first part treats supermajority rule as an alternative to unanimity rule, and I argue that that was the circumstance under which it originally arose. And I think it solves certain problems with unanimous decision making—unanimous decision making, of course, means that everybody has to participate. But in the modern era, it serves as a remedy for some of the deficiencies of majoritarian decision making. And so I take up a bunch of the different reasons that are given for introducing supermajorities against majority rule and I show that they basically don't work including for what I take to be the most important reason why we might want them, that is, the protection of vulnerable minorities. Q: What are some examples of supermajority rules? Melissa Schwartzberg: The filibuster is the most notorious one right now. But you can also think about constitutional amendment rules. Sometimes people think that constitutions require them because they make change more difficult to make. And that keeps what's called the hierarchy of norms stable, by which I mean the distinction between higher law, like constitutional law, and ordinary laws, so that constitutions can enable ordinary laws to emerge from legislatures. And I suggest that you might need a slower, more complicated process. But, it doesn't necessarily require supermajoritarian decision making. Q: Have supermajority rules ever been effective at stopping what you see as misguided legislation? Melissa Schwartzberg: When legislation is likely to be thwarted by supermajorities, it never comes to the floor. There are probably all sorts of bad legislation that never came to the floor because of supermajority rules, because people knew that it wouldn't get a hearing. I am positive that supermajorities have blocked constitutional amendments that I would have been very sorry to see enacted and amendments that I think would have been very beneficial, including the Equal Rights Amendment. The supermajority rule means that there's a built-in strong status quo bias which is important for certain constitutional fundamentals. I think there are constitutional essentials, and I think there are constitutional inessentials. And I think we could imagine stratifying the vote threshold necessary to modify each type of norm. That's another thing that people could propose to do. Q: You mentioned how We The People can institute different mechanisms to make majoritarianism more complex. Can you define complex majoritarianism and talk about the nuances that differentiate majoritarianism, complex majoritarianism, and supermajoritarianism? Melissa Schwartzberg: I think people are worried that a majority acting immediately could change any norm. Complex majoritarianism is designed to say we can understand majority decision making just in terms of a decision rule, that 50% plus one needs to be the default norm—but that doesn't mean that that needs to happen immediately. There can be time delays for decision-making, you can require successive majorities to vote on a given matter. You could have different types of majorities: for instance, you can have a majority of the population, a majority of states, and a majority of both houses of Congress necessary to enact significant changes. When you're empowering the minority to block or to veto a particular decision that a majority wants to make, it is insensitive to who that minority is. That minority could be a really powerful one, or it could be a vulnerable minority. I think it is really important that vulnerable minorities have their say. If there are fundamental interests of a specific minority that you want to protect—let's say water rights for an Indigenous group—I think it's much more helpful to give them a targeted veto over some circumscribed set of decisions than to specify a supermajority threshold for decision-making that a vulnerable minority may not even be large enough to reach to exercise a veto. Q: How can we ensure that under our increasingly polarized society that the minority still have a voice within majoritarian or complex majoritarian decisions? Especially when it seems like our legislators are ideologically and politically farther away from each other than ever? Melissa Schwartzberg: It's a really hard, important question. I think that we tend to worry excessively about policy and stability. I think there is a live possibility that if we had had majoritarian decision making, we would have less stability: Congress would enact rules that would be repealed shortly thereafter. Think of Obamacare as an example. Enacting significant legislation now is so difficult, and rare, that the stakes seem extremely high. However, I think if it were less hard to revisit legislative decision making, in a way it would lower the stakes. And that itself might be a partial remedy for a degree of partisan polarization. Over time, I believe we would achieve a new equilibrium. Q: You mentioned that equal epistemic respect is an important principle of democracy. Can you describe a little bit about what you mean by that when you say equal epistemic respect? Melissa Schwartzberg: So that is part of the justification of majority rule. Majority rule weighs votes equally. That's a technical point about how it's formed. I think that we need to think about voting as a means of rendering judgment—that's a basic theme of my work. And the claim is that when we're voting, we're not merely expressing brute preferences or something like that: rather, we have judgments that need to be taken seriously, and that those judgments ought to be weighed equally. I think that gerrymandering and unequal districts are ways in which the promise of equal epistemic respect is undermined. I think equal voting weight is absolutely crucial for democratic decision making. And I think in the United States today, we fall very far short of that. Q: Can you attribute some of these failures to the Constitutional Rot or the inability of Constitutions to function? Melissa Schwartzberg: Oh, absolutely. Passing constitutional amendments is so extraordinarily difficult because of the supermajority threshold. This basically shifts who gets to make those changes away from The People and their Representatives and towards Judges. Judges do a lot of the work of bringing constitutions into line with contemporary needs. This is problematic because Judges are less accountable than Legislators by design. Another issue is that ordinary citizens are largely disempowered. If people just know about the Constitution, but they don't feel like they can do anything, they can't modify the Constitution, they can't engage with the Constitution, they just have to leave it up to Judges. That, if anything, is a recipe for feeling even more disempowered. Q: You mentioned that Article V makes it pretty difficult to address at least the Constitutional amendment portion of supermajority rule. What would you suggest the best mechanism is to transition away from supermajority rules and practices since it's already so deeply saturated within our Constitution and political system? Melissa Schwartzberg: Within our existing constitution, I think there's no way out except absent some type of Constitutional Convention, and even getting a Constitutional Convention would be quite difficult. So that's a very difficult challenge. One remedy for some of our problems would be to eliminate the filibuster. That said, there are lots of Senators who worry that their minority voice is going to be lost. So there are tradeoffs. We still will have bicameralism, it still is very difficult to pass a law under a bicameral system. It's not as if immediate majorities can do whatever they like. Q: You've written this book that we've been talking about almost 10 years ago, how have you seen these theories play out in the past decade? And can we attribute anything that's going on currently, to these theories? Melissa Schwartzberg: I think you can attribute absolutely nothing to the book itself. I was astonished to find Jamelle Bouie, who I think of as an absolutely brilliant opinion writer, found the book interesting and worthy of discussion in his column. However, I do think that there's been increasing suspicion of supermajority rules because of the filibuster and a real worry about tyranny of the minority as opposed to tyranny of the majority. There's a new book by Levitsky and Ziblatt taking up tyranny of the minority that is on the New York Times bestseller list right now. So I think there's a lot of interest in those questions. And I think the book is right now finding an audience because it seems to speak to some of those issues. It is a strange afterlife for this book. But I'm pleased to see it.

From Vladimir Putin to Viktor Orban to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Stanford Professor Anna Gryzmala-Busse has tracked the rise of Autocrats in Eastern Europe and the global stage. Professor Gryzmala-Busse specializes in the historical development of the state, political parties, religion in politics, and post-communist politics. She presented some of her findings at her Athenaeum presentation — "Is Autocracy Contagious? The Limits of Anti-Democratic Diffusion." In the talk, she asserted that autocratic regimes concentrate on domestic issues, which form a nationalist identity and have little to do with international influences. Looking to Hungary and its despot Viktor Orban, the relationship between autocracy and international coalitions manifests. Since gaining an absolute majority in 2010, Orban has transformed Hungary from a liberal democracy into an autocracy. His reforms have fundamentally undermined Hungary's post-Cold War liberal consensus, shifting Fidesz, his party, from liberalism to populist nationalism. These changes include controlling public media and reducing the number of parliamentary seats, which has helped solidify his power. ​Orban continuously bashes against NATO and the EU, even likening EU membership to occupation under Soviet rule. He opposes the Schengen zone as a violation of Hungarian sovereignty that allows swaths of immigrants to enter the country and degrade its culture. Using this notion as justification, Orban has tightened Hungary's borders to the point of strangulation. Professor Gryzmala-Busse scorns Orban's nationalist supposition. Hungary has sent more people out of the country through open Schengen borders than they have ever accepted. Moreover, she indicates that EU membership is entirely voluntary, and Hungary is, in fact, one of its most significant beneficiaries of subsidies. Orban uses these large subsidies to fund his autocratic regime, delivering cheap EU prices to the people and claiming credit. In Poland, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski has similarly moved his country towards an illiberal democracy. However, in a recent election, Polish voters chose change, electing three opposition democratic parties, which indicated a repudiation of PiS's rule. The new government faces the challenge of undoing changes made by PiS since 2015. The PiS had turned state media into its propaganda arm, a change the new government certainly hopes to reverse. The Law and Justice Party (PiS) is cut from the same cloth of right-wing populism that succeeded in its takeover of Hungary. However, where Orban succeeded, the PiS failed. Professor Gryzmala-Busse attributes the defeat of the PiS to party incompetence. The country witnessed the overreach of autocratic policy targeting democratic institutions, abortion, the media, and LGBT+ individuals; Voters were disgusted by what they saw. The incompetence in the Law and Justice Party starts at the top. In the most recent election cycle, Kaczynski vehemently attacked opposition leader Donald Tusk for his German ancestry. He claimed that Tusk was a German flunky, claimed that Tusk took orders from Berlin, and even claimed that Tusk's grandfather was in the Wehrmacht. For the record, Tusk's grandfather was a Pole who was captured by the Nazis and conscripted into military service. Professor Gryzmala-Busse sees this blatant xenophobia and asks, "Who cares?" For any Pole under 40, Tusk's grandfather's role in Nazi Germany does not make Tusk any less Polish than any other Pole. In Eastern Europe, no event takes precedence over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Professor Gryzmala-Busse identifies Eastern European countries' lack of international autocratic diffusion when analyzing the conflict. In the interactions between Putin, Orban, and Kaczynski, she sees three autocrats who have independently built their politically focused platforms. Consequently, their stance on Ukraine is based entirely on material necessity and political benefits; it has nothing to do with a more extensive spread of autocratic doctrine. Why, then, does Poland act as Ukraine's most vigorous supporter in the EU while Hungary cozies up to Russia? Hungary and Poland have had a historically fractious relationship with Russia, yet stand on opposite sides of international opinion on the conflict. Professor Gryzmala-Busse accredits this to cheap Russian oil. Hungary, a landlocked country dependent on Russia for its energy needs, vocalizes support for Russia in exchange for oil and gas. On the other hand, Poland has access to alternative forms of energy production and has been able to wean themselves from reliance on Russia. Orban, reaping the rewards from EU subsidies and cheap Russian oil, has succeeded in Hungary, where PiS in Poland failed. Since 2010, he has transformed the constitution, nationalized large sections of the economy, and driven out all independent media. In Professor Gryzmala-Busse's words, he has "implemented a full throated autocratic regime." Orban's calculated deconstruction of Hungary's democratic systems has prevented meaningful opposition to his reign. Opposition is outspent, outforced, and gerrymandered at every turn into a decisive defeat. The deck is stacked so heavily in Orban's favor that competitors can not get the votes. Orban's illiberal democracy in Hungary has made him an appealing figurehead for conservatives in the United States, who rally behind his doctrine and support his system of governance. Beyond his political success, he fuels the fire of hatred by spewing previously unimaginable vitriol. Professor Gryzmala-Busse regards his words as "truly horrific," with him even saying that "Germans know how to deal with gas." When Orban pushes the political Overton window, he enables imitations in the United States. This is perhaps the most remarkable example of diffusion from Orban's regime—his audacious push to redefine the boundaries of acceptable speech, brazenly pushing the limits of what was once considered socially permissible. Indeed, American politics have reflected this. Donald Trump has, since his explosion onto the political stage, shocked Democrats and Republicans alike with his scathing rhetoric. In an increasingly dark world, Poland's recent election serves as a beacon for opposition to autocracy, showing us that democracy can prevail.

Vigil for Jaahnavi Kandula On a January day this year in Seattle, Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old Indian graduate student, tragically lost her life when she was struck by a police car in a busy crosswalk. The officer was driving 63 miles per hour without a continuous siren while responding to a drug overdose call, and the street had a normal speed limit of 25 miles per hour. A day after Jaahnavi Kandula was fatally struck, another officer, Daniel Auderer– a “drug recognition expert” – was sent to see if the officer whose vehicle hit her had been impaired. Auderer responded to the scene and found no impairment in the officer but made callous remarks about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death, sparking outrage, particularly within the South Asian community. In the footage, Officer Daniel Auderer laughs, suggesting a mere $11,000 in compensation for the incident, saying, “She was 26 anyway” and “she had limited value.” In response to an investigation of his actions, Officer Auderer wrote to the city’s Office of Police Accountability and attempted to flip the script. He wrote, “I was imitating what a lawyer tasked with negotiating the case would be saying and being sarcastic to express that they shouldn’t be coming up with crazy arguments to minimize the payment.” The officer was reassigned but is yet to be fired despite outcries and rallies demanding justice for Kandula. The public widely condemned Auderer’s comments – particularly the reference to Kandula’s supposedly “limited value” and mistaken reference to her age – as insensitive and demanded accountability for the officer. Kandula’s story, marked by dreams, laughter, and untapped potential, is emblematic of a disturbing trend observed by critical legal and economic theorists: the persistence of racial devaluation in legal damages despite societal advances. Professor Martha Chamallas’ work on social justice in tort law is central to the discourse on racial devaluation. She critically analyzes forensic economics’ role in perpetuating inequality through the law. At the heart of Chamallas’ argument is the early 20th-century case of Griffin v. Brady, in which George Griffin, an African-American man, was awarded a measly $300 in a false imprisonment lawsuit. The decision on damages was marred by racial bias. Justice Durgo explicitly considered Griffin’s race as he reduced the damages amount, saying Griffin “would not be hurt just as much if put in prison as every man would be.” He explained that the impact of wrongful imprisonment “depends on a man’s standing, what his circumstances are, and if he is a colored man, the fact that he is a colored man is to be considered.” Ultimately, Justice Drugo considered Griffin’s life and standing to be worth less than that of a white man and decided on this basis that he deserved shockingly low damages. Like Griffin v. Brady, the recent death of Jaahnavi Kandula and Officer Auderer’s comments illustrate how racial bias impacts legal valuations. These cases, using Yale law professor Reva Siegel’s words, exemplify the theory of “preservation through transformation.” This concept suggests that, while discrimination may evolve and even lessen over time, its core prejudices and hierarchies can remain deeply embedded within societal structures, including the legal system. The shift from explicit and outright stated racial bias in cases like Griffin’s to more covert expressions in incidents like Kandula’s underscores this ongoing issue. Just as Justice Dugro believed Griffin’s suffering was less significant because of his race, the modern legal system, which remains reliant on the calculations of forensic economists, continues to undervalue some lives based on demographic factors. In Jaahnavi’s case, the term “limited value” doesn’t just represent a dollar figure but implies an entire world of biases, preconceived notions, and deeply rooted prejudices. It speaks to how society, and by extension its legal system, views the worth of an individual, particularly when that individual belongs to a marginalized group. While we may have reached a point of progress where it is no longer permissible for our judges to specifically reference victims’ race when sizing up their suffering, racial bias still pervades the attitudes and practices of street-level bureaucrats like Auderer. Recognizing both overt and subtle forms of discrimination is crucial for achieving genuine equity and justice in the legal system. As societal norms evolve, so too must our legal frameworks, ensuring they don’t just change in form but also in substance, truly upholding the values of equality and justice for all.

On December 19th, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a historic ruling in Anderson v. Griswold.  In a 4-3 split, the Court held that (1) Donald Trump is not qualified to be President of the United States under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and (2) that the CO Secretary of State cannot place his name on the state’s primary ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court issued a pause on its ruling from going into effect to allow the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in. This is an unprecedented move, but it shouldn't necessarily be viewed as incorrect, especially given the unprecedented actions taken by President Trump that directly led to this ruling. The case is complicated. Let’s start with the basics: a group of GOP primary voters alleged that President Trump is not “qualified” under the Colorado Elections Code to be President because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars officers of the United States from office for “engag[ing] in insurrection.” The Colorado Supreme Court determined that the presidency was covered by this prohibition and that Donald Trump had “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. As expected, many politicians and pundits on the Right reacted hysterically to the decision. But beneath the uproar, many conservatives are broadcasting incomplete portrayals of both the law and the Constitution in this case. They ironically ignore the same power of state legislatures within the Electoral College which they often vociferously defend when it serves their interests. Most recently, Trump’s lawyers pushed the “Independent State Legislature Theory,” which essentially argued that partisan state legislatures could overturn the will of voters. The criticism from the Right fails to correctly identify the legal authority which the Colorado Supreme Court acted under, so it becomes easy for them to argue that the Court acted absent any authority at all. One House Republican, speaking to Axios, insisted that the U.S. Supreme Court would surely overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision because “there is no way that the 14th Amendment was intended to be applied this way.” On her show, The Ingraham Angle, Laura Ingraham—a former Thomas clerk—cried that “they [took] the Constitution and turned it into a piece of Silly Putty for political ends. That is classic judicial activism, is it not?” In essence, the right-wing narrative is simple: the 14th Amendment does not give state courts the power to strike a candidate’s name from the ballot, and by doing so, the Colorado Supreme Court twists the Constitution to take more power than the 14th Amendment gives. There’s one problem with this argument: the Colorado Supreme Court acted under the command of the Colorado Election Code, not the 14th Amendment. And that distinction makes a world of difference. To understand why the state law in this case is so important, we need to first understand the constitutional power of the states within the Electoral College. In 2024, Colorado will have 10 electoral votes. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, of the U.S. Constitution—the Electors Clause—asserts each state’s authority to assign their electoral votes “in such Manner that the Legislature thereof may direct.” In Colorado, as is the case with most states, the state legislature chose to assign their electors to the winner of a popular vote. To provide for these popular elections, using the power given to the states by the Electors Clause, Colorado’s General Assembly adopted the Election Code. Among other things, the Election Code commands that only “qualified” candidates be listed on the ballot. Colorado’s electoral votes, just like those of other states, come with conditions. Addressing the Electors Clause, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that “the U.S. Constitution authorize[s] states to assess the constitutional qualifications of presidential candidates” and that state courts can assess the constitutional eligibility of candidates, “provided their legislatures have established such authority by statute.” The Election Code satisfies this provision: Limiting ballot placement to “qualified” candidates must necessarily exclude candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming presidential office. The Griswold majority concluded that President Trump failed to meet the requirements of Section 3 and thus could not be a “qualified” candidate. When deciding if state courts can remove Trump from the ballot, the explicit command of state law is critical. On December 27th, the Michigan Supreme Court denied review of a similar 14th Amendment argument and left Trump’s name on the state’s primary ballot. Dissenting from the majority’s decision, Justice Welch argued that Michigan state law had a critical difference from Colorado’s Election Code. While Colorado law requires candidates to be “qualified,” Michigan law makes no such requirement. In the Michigan case, there was no provision that authorized state courts to assess the presidential eligibility of a candidate for primary ballots. The contrast between the Colorado and Michigan decisions should highlight the importance of state electoral law and the exact authority it gives to state courts. Beyond Section 3, the U.S. Constitution imposes clear restrictions on who may become President. The Eligibility Clause in Article II requires the President to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years of age, and a resident of the United States for at least fourteen years. Before ascending to the U.S. Supreme Court, then-appellate Judge Gorsuch upheld Colorado’s exclusion of a citizen not born in the United States from the presidential ballot in Hassan v. Colorado (2012). Hassan had argued that even if he was ineligible from assuming office, it was unconstitutional for Colorado to remove him from the ballot. To this, Gorsuch responded, “A state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.” If Colorado has the power to enforce requirements under the Eligibility Clause, why would the state lack the power to enforce requirements imposed by the 14th Amendment? It is true that the disqualifying criterion in Section 3—“engaged in insurrection”— is less objective than those found in the Eligibility Clause. And many dispute that Section 3 imposes any presidential criteria at all. But these are secondary issues. Because the Colorado Supreme Court only reaches the 14th Amendment question under the command of state electoral law, critics should at least respect their authority to interpret the Constitution even if they disagree with their interpretation. Most legal analysts think the U.S. Supreme Court is all but guaranteed to take this case. So how will this issue of state power affect their decision? Michael Luttig, a conservative and former Fourth Circuit Appellate Judge, is confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the Griswold decision. The main reason? The Colorado Supreme Court made it clear in its 133-page opinion that it “resolved each and every [constitutional question] as required not just under state law, but, more importantly, under federal constitutional law”—the Electors Clause. If the justices agree with Luttig’s assessment, there are a few routes which the U.S. Supreme Court could take. First, they could simply hold that while the Colorado court had the authority to consider this question, their interpretation was incorrect: the 14th Amendment imposes no presidential eligibility criteria. This option would not only be contentious (many constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum, using a variety of interpretive methods, would disagree), but also far-reaching: In approximately 15 states, there are ongoing cases challenging President Trump’s eligibility to appear on primary ballots. This decision would represent the most significant political involvement in a presidential election by the Court since Bush v. Gore. Given this, the Supreme Court could exercise deference in a few different ways. First, the Supreme Court could state, definitively, that the 14th Amendment imposes presidential criteria, but it is up to each state to decide if their law calls for constitutional assessment of eligibility. This ruling would not “strike Trump from every ballot” as many conservatives claim because his removal depends on the exact letter of state law. This option would clarify a key constitutional question and still give states the ultimate say over determining candidate eligibility. A second option would be to recognize that state courts, so long as their electoral law grants it, have the authority to decide if the 14th Amendment imposes eligibility criteria at all. This second option does not clarify the pertinent constitutional issue as much as the first, but it also gives more leeway to state legislatures in the authority that they prescribe to state courts. The Framers recognized that the Supreme Court’s awesome and “terrible” power to undo the actions taken by the federal and state governments must be balanced with restraint. Past Supreme Courts have shown apprehension toward issuing broad-sweeping declarations that curtail the sovereignty of the states and could significantly impact the democratic process. As this case will impact both state authority, under the Electors Clause, and one of the most important elections in this nation’s 247-year history, judicial deference to the states is highly warranted. Most recently, California decided to keep Trump on the primary ballot while Maine decided to remove him. This is the precise beauty of federalism. The Supreme Court should recognize that it may be best to leave this critical 14th Amendment question to those who control their electors in the first place: the states.

On Sunday, February 4th, the Pitzer Student Senate deliberated on resolution 60-R-5, a proposal to suspend the college’s study abroad program with the University of Haifa in Israel. This initiative, spearheaded by the Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), seeks to discontinue any further academic exchanges or programs with institutions in Israel until they cease their alleged involvement in discriminatory practices against Palestinians. Proponents of the resolution stressed the significance of this measure during open debate. They underscored direct requests from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and Right to Education, a campaign founded at Birzeit University in the West Bank, emphasizing the proposal’s alignment with the wider Palestinian-led movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) founded in 2005. Other advocates cited reported incidents of racism against Arab students at the university, its hosting of Israeli military training, Israel’s ongoing trial in the International Court of Justice, and Pitzer’s commitment to social responsibility as reasons to support it. Some senators argued that Pitzer’s study abroad partnership with the University of Haifa is already defunct: one student claimed that Pitzer staff in the study abroad office do not even have current contact information for the program, and another senator noted that no Pitzer students had participated in the program for several years. This outnumbered group recommended that the resolution instead focus on compelling Pitzer President Strom Thacker to communicate the college’s opposition to “all actions deemed genocidal.” Another student referred to a proposal currently under review by faculty committees to clearly define the process for closing programs in the future. Yet, the resolution’s proponents saw these as administrative attempts to close the program quietly and disagreed with any attempts to modify the core aims of the resolution, stressing the symbolic value of 60-R-5 to set a precedent for subsequent academic boycotts at colleges and universities across the nation.  “The end goal of the Suspend Haifa Campaign and this resolution that we’re talking about today is not just to suspend our ties with the University of Haifa or to close the program…the end goal of this is to set precedent for an institutional boycott around the country,” a proponent said. According to one of the resolution's supporters, Palestinians chose to call on Pitzer specifically because of its small size and its democratic governance structure. That does not mean, however, that faculty and students have the final say at Pitzer. In March 2019, the faculty, student, and staff-composed Pitzer College Council voted 67-28 to suspend the Haifa program, but then-president Melvin Oliver unilaterally vetoed the decision, citing its political nature and claiming it was prejudicial in “singling out” Israel. Despite its previous failure, Claremont SJP re-launched the campaign to suspend Pitzer-Haifa in March of 2023, nearly a year after Oliver’s retirement as president, in hopes that his successor would be more amenable to their agenda. Since then, the club has held a “snackie” event, a poster-making event, a rally, and a donation strike as part of the campaign. Like the rest of SJP’s advocacy, the campaign has gained much energy and urgency from the conflict in Gaza that began in October. The club demonstrated on Sunday that it has not forgotten its past setbacks. Acknowledging that, if it passes, the resolution will likely be vetoed again, one proponent vowed that it would “keep coming back” and that the college would “keep having pressure on it.” The resolution will be put to a final vote this Sunday at 7:00 PM.

Should the religious baker have to follow non-discrimination law and bake a wedding cake for the gay couple? Should the (public) high school football coach be allowed to pray with his players on the 50-yard line after a game? According to Notre Dame Law Professor and CMC alumnus Vincent Phillip Muñoz ‘93, the Founding Fathers would have said yes, and yes. During his lecture at the Athenaeum, Professor Muñoz said the Founders did not understand religious liberty — or any other natural right — to be without boundaries. Their understanding of natural rights did not authorize citizens to disturb the public peace or act licentiously through their exercise of religious freedoms. Likewise, the application of laws banning murder to religiously motivated killings like ritual human sacrifice does not violate the Founders’ understanding of the natural right of religious free exercise — thankfully. In Federalist No. 10 and No. 57, James Madison argued that the equal application of law to everyone, including its signatories, would be the surest bulwark against the enactment of bad laws. At every level of government, religious people are able to advocate and compromise for laws that are not heavily burdensome on their faith, and Muñoz tells us that, in a large Madisonian republic that facilitates a multiplicity of interests, religious exemptions from generally applicable laws aren't constitutionally required. Instead, exemptions can undermine the rule of law and corrupt the coalition-building that tends to give us justly representative and moderate outcomes. For Muñoz, the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause means the state cannot function like a church nor delegate its powers to a church. On the issue of school prayer, this means state officials cannot write prayers and mandate that students recite them. Muñoz would support the outcome of cases like Engel v. Vitale (1962), in which the Court struck down the “‘Regents’ prayer” prescribed for New York public school students at the beginning of the school day. He would also hold that teachers and students can pray voluntarily on school grounds so long as they don’t disrupt ordinary school functions. Muñoz says his “common-sense” conclusion reflects the Framers’ design to protect religious freedom by limiting state authority over religious exercises and retaining legitimate state power from church authorities. In this constitutional order, the government can’t make students and teachers recite state-prescribed prayers nor can it delegate its power to religious authorities, but neither can it prohibit teachers, students, and coaches from praying when it does not interfere with their assigned responsibilities. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the justices agreed the football coach could pray, while also reversing most of the existing jurisprudence on what constitutes a state endorsement of religion. The current Supreme Court has also strayed from Muñoz’s strict natural-rights approach, getting fast and loose with granting exemptions to generally applicable laws like non-discrimination statutes. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, the Court ruled in favor of the religious baker, and more recently, in 303 Creative, LLC v. Elenis, in favor of a web designer in a similar predicament. The baker and web designer both argued that the 1st Amendment gave them a right to be exempt from generally applicable laws so they could deny customers in accordance with their faith. Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia both warned presciently of the dangers associated with unrestrained exemptions, and their predictions have come to bear. The outcome is a country in which every person is increasingly “a law unto himself.” Muñoz underscores what Scalia could see but Alito cannot: while religious freedom is an inalienable natural right, the Court’s conservatives are badly wrong to see it as a basis for denying legally guaranteed or democratically mandated protections to others.

On February 11th, the Pitzer Student Senate overwhelmingly voted (34-1) to suspend the college's direct-enroll study abroad program with the University of Haifa in Israel, citing the institution's alleged involvement in "Israeli apartheid" and discrimination against Palestinians. The resolution also blocks the creation of partnerships with Israeli universities until such practices end. The Senate held the vote in the McConnell Founder’s Room, drawing students, faculty, staff, and alumni from across the Claremont Colleges. Notably present were Nigel Boyle, the chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, and Pitzer President Strom Thacker. Among the nearly 30 people who spoke in favor of the initiative were student leaders, two faculty members; Prof. Heather Ferguson from CMC and another from Pitzer, and members of the local community representing Los Angeles Jewish Voice for Peace. Even Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), urged senators to pass the measure through a recorded message. No phones were allowed, and no one spoke against the resolution. Some addressed President Thacker directly, accusing him and his administration of being complicit in the murder and oppression of Palestinians. In response to the senate's decision, President Thacker issued a statement the following Monday. While expressing gratitude for being part of the conversation, he emphasized that the views of the Student Senate do not reflect those of the entire student body. He reiterated the college's commitment to its foundational mission and the importance of a safe and productive campus learning environment. Thacker stated that resolutions contrary to these core values would not be upheld. Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) issued a joint statement celebrating the measure’s adoption, calling it “one step closer to a historic BDS victory” and reaffirming their intention to set a precedent for boycotts at other campuses throughout the nation. They vowed to continue their campaign until the resolution passes the next step: The College Council governing body that represents faculty, staff, and students. Should the resolution clear this hurdle, the final decision on its implementation will rest with President Thacker.

With muscles popping out of his shirt at age 70, James Oakes is an academic who doesn’t shrink from a political fight. During his February 12th Athenaeum visit, the acclaimed historian of emancipation argued for a new framework for understanding Lincoln’s approach to ending slavery — antislavery Constitutionalism. Lincoln is often cast in extreme ways: idolized as a quasi-divine emancipator, or criticized as a hesitant, racist acquiescer. But Lincoln’s approach to ending slavery was not driven by the sweeping gestures of myth. Rather, it was dictated by a pragmatic engagement with the legal and moral compromises made at the Constitutional Convention that formed the Union. As a shrewd politician and President, Lincoln focused more on the goals of stopping the spread of slavery while holding the Union together than on ending the moral evil of slavery outright.  His vision was that halting slavery's expansion to the Western territories would gradually erode its economic and political foundation. The original Constitution was a compromise with slavery, as is apparent in the clauses that obliquely refer to the institution without naming it. The Three-Fifths Clause put pro-slavery Southerners in a position to dominate the national government through the early decades of the 19th Century. As Alexander Hamilton argued at the New York ratifying convention, against the critics of the three-fifths compromise: without it “no union could possibly have been formed.” Beyond the Three-Fifths Clause and other explicit provisions, the Constitution depended on  a “federal consensus” that prevented Congress from abolishing slavery in states where it already existed. An example is the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which struck a balance between free and slave states. Lincoln understood this “federal consensus” as essential to holding the nation together. Yet even if the founders left a Constitution that represented a compromise with slavery, they also left a Constitution with numerous provisions entirely at odds with the practice. During the antebellum decades, as slavery’s defenders ratcheted up their claims that slaveholding was a constitutionally protected property right, abolitionists and their political allies drew out the antislavery implications of the founding documents. While Southern enslavers emphasized their right to recapture fugitives who escaped to the North, abolitionists emphasized states’ authority to require due process in renditions to protect free Black citizens. Some influential radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison understandably weren’t as hellbent on holding the Union together or defending the Constitution. Garrison concluded that the Constitution was a “covenant with death” and “an agreement with hell.” Ironically, Garrison’s reading of the Constitution as a pro-slavery document matched the interpretation of fervent slavery advocates, like Senator John C. Calhoun, Chief Justice Justice Roger B. Taney, and Jefferson Davis, to name a few. This pro-slavery reading of the Constitution has reemerged in contemporary debates in novel ways. Oakes sees The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which re-popularized the argument that the Constitution—and the founding  itself—were explicitly and irredeemably pro-slavery, as erasing these countervailing anti-slavery interpretations. It was this interpretive tradition, taken up by abolitionists and eventually by Republicans like Abraham Lincoln, that actually challenged the views and entrenched political might of the Southern “slave power.” In fact, Oakes argues that this Constitutional reading drove Southern fears of Lincoln that culminated in secession — the decision that catalyzed the end of Slavery. Abolitionist Lysander Spooner, for example, insisted that the Constitution, by avoiding the use of the word slavery, provided no constitutional sanction to the practice. Frederick Douglass even argued that the Constitution was a “glorious freedom document.” In a speech before the Anti-Slavery Society in Glasgow, Douglass echoed Spooner’s point that the terms “slave” and “slavery” were absent from the document, offering instead a pro-liberty reading. The Fifth Amendment, for instance, states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Black Americans, even if not yet recognized as citizens, were undeniably persons. Abolitionists and Northern politicians found in the Fifth Amendment and other parts of the Constitution a potent weapon to stymie enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Acts. Other abolitionists contended that Congress held the exclusive constitutional authority to ban slavery in the Western territories and was morally bound to exercise it. Furthermore, they believed that Congress had the power to end the domestic slave trade and eliminate slavery within the District of Columbia. As support for this contention, they highlighted the Constitution's preamble giving the federal government the power to “secure the blessings of liberty” and pointed to the Fourth Amendment's protection from unwarranted seizures. The Northern critics of slavery were persistent, They maintained that the rights and freedoms guaranteed to citizens, as stated in Article IV, Section 2, stemmed directly from the federal Constitution, not the individual state constitutions. This meant that Black citizens from the North had the constitutionally-protected right to move across state lines. They utilized the constitutional assurance of republican government in every state, delineated in Article IV, Section 4, as a lever to challenge the legitimacy of slavery within the Southern states. And they warned that should the slave states decide to leave the Union, they would abandon their constitutional protections, thereby absolving states opposed to slavery from the responsibility of enforcing the law regarding fugitive slaves. ​​Within these constitutional boundaries, Lincoln pursued, before and during the Civil War, the goal of abolition by individual states. He intended pressure from the federal government to move the Southern states to enact their own gradual emancipation policies, as individual Northern states had done following the American Revolution. Lincoln’s debates with Stephen Douglas and his public addresses reveal a moral leader wrestling with the nation's founding contradictions, seeking to reconcile the promise of equality and liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution’s accommodations of slavery. Southern slaveholders harbored such deep fears of the Republicans and Lincoln that his victory in the Election of 1860 triggered the immediate secession of several slave states. Even before Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, seven states had already established the Confederacy, with four additional states joining them between April and June. The newly-formed Republican Party was the political embodiment of this antislavery constitutionalism, with Lincoln as its figurehead. Secession was not a hysterical overreaction to a nonexistent threat: Republicans meant to challenge slavery and posed a serious threat to it. In the 1830s, long before the Civil War erupted, President John Quincy Adams was asserting the emancipatory force of the Constitution’s War Powers clause should the federal government be called on to repel a foreign invasion or suppress a domestic insurrection. Oakes argues that by the time the Civil War began, Adams’ reading had been widely accepted by antislavery politicians across the North. In other words, they believed that secession released Lincoln from having to uphold the “federal consensus.” Soon after hostilities commenced, Lincoln and the Republicans began using the powers afforded by wartime to undermine the Confederacy's main support system and accelerate the end of slavery. While Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School argued at the Athenaeum last year that Lincoln had to ‘break’ the Constitution’s “federal consensus” during the Civil War in order to grant emancipation and remake the document, Oakes strongly disagrees — he suggests that Lincoln effectively utilized two fundamental aspects of anti-slavery Constitutionalism: the idea that the states in rebellion had lost their entitlement to constitutional protections and the provision that allowed the federal government to suppress uprisings within states, which also implied the authority to free slaves in the process. To Oakes, the connection between the rise of anti-slavery constitutionalism and the outbreak of the Civil War is undeniable. In this sense, the pro-slavery fears were well-founded. Lincoln and the Republicans were coming back at them not just with the power of arms, but with the power of Constitutional ideas.

In a landmark bilateral initiative, the United States and China agreed to join forces against the fentanyl epidemic—a move that signals a potential thaw in fraught relations. Yet few know what the agreement entails, whether it will be effective, or what it signals for cooperation on other issues. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to the talks last November. China had previously limited its cooperation with the U.S. following former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan. The opioid epidemic is devastating the U.S., with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, at the root of the chaos. Introduced in the 1960s for pain management, fentanyl has become a lethal street drug. Infamously addictive, the drug is often used to "cut" more expensive substances like cocaine, posing dangerous risks to unsuspecting users. In 2022, over 107,000 Americans died of fentanyl overdoses, roughly twice the U.S. death toll from the Vietnam War. Most of the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl are manufactured in China by small chemical and pharmaceutical companies. These companies sell to cartels in Mexico, who turn them into fentanyl they then smuggle into the U.S. China lacks an immediate economic incentive to crack down on fentanyl production — they profit from the cartels’ business. Their cooperation, instead, reflects longer term political and economic objectives. Chinese officials saw other benefits to this agreement: relief from broad U.S. sanctions against 32 Chinese companies blamed for fentanyl production or mistreatment of the Uyghurs. When Xi refused to begin talks without Biden first lifting the sanctions on the China’s Public Security Ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science, the U.S. agreed. The U.S. gained bargaining power from Chinese economic tumult. Economic decline began in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions but recently worsened, reflecting weaknesses in the housing sector, stock market, and domestic consumption. These economic challenges increase U.S. leverage to ensure the fentanyl agreement has real impact. China needs to remediate U.S. relations to attract foreign capital and increase exports. Should China fail to constrain fentanyl exports, the U.S. might reinstate sanctions and threaten trade between the countries. But creating an enforceable deal is challenging. Drug manufacturing's clandestine nature makes regulation difficult. Fentanyl is particularly difficult to regulate because manufacturers create new analogs so frequently that regulatory agencies can not keep up. Some urge the U.S. and China to engage in a multilateral approach, pointing to China’s successful collaboration with Australia under “Taskforce Blaze.” The 2015 collaboration successfully reduced illegal methamphetamine trafficking that was devastating Australia. Versions of this already exist: the Biden Administration established the Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats in July 2023, which more than 80 countries joined (though not China). U.S. and Chinese leaders could find multilateral efforts easier to embrace given bilateral frictions and mutual mistrust. At a minimum, successful efforts should include Mexico, which is central to the problem but absent from the conversation. While the U.S. heavily criticizes China for its inability to control the flow of fentanyl out of its country, Mexico shares blame for its failure to police and control its powerful drug cartels. Finally, many note America’s failures in responding to the threat of fentanyl. Both China and Mexico have condemned the U.S. for focusing exclusively on supply without addressing American demand for the drug. Furthermore, Mexico struggles to control its drug cartels because they possess military-grade automatic weapons – most of which were imported from the U.S. And U.S. inability to control domestic demand for fentanyl ensures rich profits for those Mexican and Chinese entities making and selling the drugs. Journalist Sam Quinones wrote America must “step up to curtail the southward supply of assault weapons… that ensure traffickers can produce the drugs killing so many Americans.” The U.S.-China pact is a make-or-break moment in the battle against this epidemic. If they fail, the grim reality is more lives lost and tensions heightened.

Online, there’s quite a bit of chatter about going offline. All of us agree: we hate it here, on the internet. Online, we’re barely ourselves, and yet we’re the worst of us. Online, our IQ plummets, our blood pressure soars. All of us threaten to leave—we’re finished, we’re through, it’s over. And, somehow, it’s never over—the doom-scrolling, thumbs-ing up, thumbs-ing down, freaking out, geeking out, spamming, stanning. If you’re an average internet user, a quarter of your waking life passes online. A quarter of the one and only life you’ll ever get, handed over to The Algorithm. A few months ago, this much became apparent: life wasn’t mine, anymore. No—it belonged to Elon, and the Podcast Bros of the Manosphere, and Taylor Swift’s “The Era’s Tour: TikTok/Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts Edition.” Was it ever to be returned to me? Only by force, it seemed. The apps had to go. Screw you Elon; screw you, Podcast Bros. So there they went. Instagram: delete. Youtube next, and TikTok, too. X (or “Twitter,” if you’re in denial)? Good riddance. And finally—agonizingly—Reddit. Farewell. After the Apps, a silence rushed in: the uneasy quiet you’d expect to hear just before the end of the world. A full quarter of the future was newly freed up. What now? Dope-sickness, mostly. Getting clean wasn’t easy; the Pavlovian slave within fiended for mindless amusement—anything at all to entertain, to occupy, to distract. Muscle-memory ruled. A few times each hour, the phone would inexplicably “appear” in hand; my fingers twitched—the shudders of withdrawal. With all of the usual distractions uninstalled, though, there was nowhere to go except for the weather app, to check the conditions in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Or something. Freedom, it turns out, is a responsibility. With the “Luddite Project” in full swing, the pressure was on—to replace the soul-suck of the apps with genuine meaning. When you reject society, expectations are high. Presumably, you’ve turned your back for a reason: society’s gotten it wrong, and you’ve gotten it right. Because, well, you’re enlightened. And so, the mandate was never: “prove being online sucks.” No. Everyone already knew this. The mandate was: “prove being offline is better.” And, in some ways, it was better. Sure, there were periods of boredom, moments which seemed entirely devoid of purpose. And yet, the internet hadn’t seemed to supply much purpose, either. Was spending an afternoon watching a TikTok plastic surgeon analyze the Hadids’ noses purpose? Unlikely. And, it’s true: there’s lots to be done offline. For me, the hours I’d once reserved for scrolling were now spent walking. Everyone had been telling me: “Get outside!” And, I did. And the world was bright—and it wasn’t blue light. And it was meditative; this was time to cogitate, to be alone with the contents of consciousness, to chip away at life’s largest questions. Questions such as: “What might the Tate Brothers be up to, right now?” and “What sort of dust-storm of ill-will has Ariana Grande kicked up this week?” and “Are the chronically-single members of r/datingadvice really going to end up alone?” So yes, the internet haunted me, even after our break-up. No part of me wanted to log back on. And yet, the knowledge of it all going down—without the knowledge of what “it” was, or what “it” meant—nagged. Some would call it “FOMO.” Well, not exactly. As a passive Internet Addict (never visible in any comment section, never a “poster”), being online was for data-collection. All of us, to some extent, exist on the internet as “cultural researchers,” observers, and meta-critics. We’re fascinated by our fascinations, our fixations—by the kinds of creatures we are, and the kinds of creatures we’re made to be, by Silicon Valley. And that’s the real reason to stay: being on the internet was never really about fitting in, there. It had always been, ironically, an entry ticket into the “real world.” Did I want to be online for its sake? Of course not—I needed to be online for instrumental reasons: to complain about the internet, offline. Did I miss the Culture War? No, I missed the commentary—the picking sides—with real-life companions. It wasn’t that I missed the Podcast Bros; I missed mocking them in non-virtual spaces. Bitching is bonding. And if I wasn’t doing the first, I couldn’t get the second. We’re all “in” the internet, always. The internet doesn’t stop when you shut down the apps—not if everyone else stays behind. There’s no real escape hatch. Being offline, and being the only one, is equivalent to being the shut-in neighbor of the person who’s hosting the World’s Wildest Party (invite list: everyone, and not you): there will be drunken brawls, and dancing, and talk of politics. And you’ll hear it, through the walls—the noise pollution, seeping in. And yet, it’s muffled, unintelligible. You’ll just never get it. People will try to describe to you what happened, and they’ll fail miserably to capture the way things were. Everyone knows the best part of the party is the debrief—the picking it apart, the gossip which follows. Half of the fun is the post-mortem—the after party. And, in the Internet Age, the “real world” is the after party. The internet hadn’t stopped leaking into my life. But I’d lost the ability to interpret it. Friends were still saying “Naurrrr” instead of “No” for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, but for reasons, I suspected, had something to do with the one place they all were, that I wasn’t. I hadn’t really left, after all.

The “Take Our Border Back” convoy that drove to San Ysidro on the outskirts of San Diego last month served as a reminder of the raging debates surrounding immigration policy. Targeting San Ysidro, the city with the busiest border crossing in the Western hemisphere, the anti-immigration convoy protested President Joe Biden’s border management. The convoy began in Virginia and traveled to US-Mexico borders in Texas, Arizona, and California. Although originally intended to include 700,000 trucks, observers counted less than 200. Leaders of the convoy cited drug cartels, human trafficking, and terrorism as their main concerns. But for Mexico native Ilse Robles, who was not even aware that protests occurred, it was just another day of commuting to Starbucks in this city of 30,000 people. “I always go back and forth,” said Robles, 28, who was born in Tijuana but now lives in San Ysidro and crosses back into Mexico four times a week. “They always ask me, where do you go? Why do you cross so often? And I'm like, because I'm a resident, I'm not a citizen yet,” Robles said. “I tell them I take care of my mom. And then they understand.” Robles’ easygoing attitude doesn’t reflect the growing frustrations a few states over in Eagle Pass, Texas. That border city, another one of the convoy’s targets, has been pressured by historic rates of migration. During one notable week in December, some 12,000 migrants crossed from Mexico. Backlash from Texans prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to implement his own state-run initiatives to counteract what he calls the ‘invasion’ of migrants. In order to increase border security, Abbott repeatedly defied federal regulations. On top of his migrant bussing efforts, Abbott signed a law allowing state troops to make arrests. The result has been a humanitarian disaster with incidents including drowning, razor wire injuries, and migrants being pushed back into the water. Meanwhile, the town’s residents don’t seem very concerned: “I think Greg Abbott is doing the right thing,” Eagle Pass resident Elias Mata told The New York Times in early February. “We appreciate the convoy coming here,” Mata added. “US border agents in Eagle Pass, Texas, are outnumbered by migrants 200 to 1,” the New York Post reported last December. “The diversion of manpower has extended beyond Texas, with CBP personnel flying in from areas around the US to help.” Daily life in San Ysidro presents a different side of the story surrounding the border crisis. The predominantly Spanish-speaking district is proof of a functioning immigration system. Amidst the significant number of crossings in San Ysidro, residents like Ilse Robles have been able to build a life in the United States. Robles has lived in San Ysidro for more than 10 years. She graduated from Southwestern College with a degree in literature. During the pandemic, she bounced from job to job, eventually landing at Starbucks. She started her own jewelry business on the side. Aside from occasional comments about her pink hair, Robles reports little difficulty crossing the border. “I Uber a lot. So I'll take an Uber from here to there, and then I walk across the border. So that'll take me 12 minutes to walk back,” Robles told me outside the Starbucks before starting her shift. Kevin Chapa, 20, who lives in Tijuana, shared similar sentiments: “There’s really no issue for me,” he said on a break from his job at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop in San Ysidro. “As long as you have the necessary paperwork, you’re fine.” Chapa lives with his family 20 minutes into Tijuana. He crosses the border every weekend for work, a routine he has followed for the past two years. And it’s not just Robles and Chapa. “The jobs I've had here, more than half of my coworkers are residing in Mexico,” Chapa told me. The contrasting situations in San Ysidro and Eagle Pass reflect divergent policies between states. As a “Sanctuary State,” California prioritizes community safety per the California Values Act (SB 54), signed into law in October 2017. This legislation restricts state and local resources from being utilized to assist federal immigration enforcement efforts. Conversely, Texas’ SB 4 prohibits these kinds of sanctuary policies and mandates that state and local authorities enforce federal immigration law. While a federal judge ruled SB4 unconstitutional on the grounds that border security enforcement is solely in the federal government's jurisdiction, Abbott appealed the ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. San Ysidro Walmart employee Nick Dillinger’s attitude is emblematic of those asking for increased border security. “I don’t speak Spanish, brother,” Dillinger said when I first asked to interview him in Spanish. Dillenger claimed he is primarily concerned with safety and resource allocation. He lit a Marlboro cigarette and shook his head. “You got people living on the street, you got veterans living on the street, they need help, and you haven't helped them. That's the problem right there,” Dillinger said. The immigration debate on the ground will only intensify as the 2024 election looms. In February, Republicans in the House voted to impeach DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas, over what critics called standard policy differences and not constitutional issues.

CMC Registrar Katharine Lowe tips her cap to Barbara Christman, Makia Payne, Deborah Hasty, and Mary Eiland, the first female students to receive CMC diplomas in 1978. “Many of the women in that first class turned the urinals into planters in their bathrooms,” recalls Susan M. King ‘85, one of Claremont McKenna College’s female ‘pioneer’ students. While ‘pacesetter’ refers to the first three generations of female students, ‘pioneers’ refer to every generation of female students who applied to Claremont Men’s College. Just about 50 years ago, in April of 1975, 28 out of 41 trustees at Claremont Men’s College voted to admit female students to the college. Despite this shift to coeducation, it would not be until 1981 that the institution’s name would change from Claremont Men’s College to Claremont McKenna College (CMC). “All of us in the class of ‘85 picked Claremont Men's College to appear on our diploma,” King told me, “because that was the school we applied to.” However, even after the admission of female students and the shift in name, by no means were the first female students at CMC guaranteed gender equality at the college. The path towards equality was bumpy. Like King, Lisa A. McCaffery ‘86 applied to Claremont Men’s College but was accepted to Claremont McKenna College. McCaffery and her peers encountered a mix of skepticism and resistance from some of the older faculty. McCaffery told me, “I felt like there were definitely still some of the older faculty members walking around with a chip on their shoulder because there were female students.” Reflecting on her time at CMC, McCaffery commented, “Being a minority, I had to learn to speak up for myself and learn to ask for what I wanted.” Carrie George ‘80 shared a similar experience.  “He didn’t even give us a chance,” she said of her marketing professor. “He didn’t want us there; he didn’t like us, very dismissive.” CMC’s first female students experienced sexism—ranging from microaggressions to instances of blatant aggression. The first year of coeducation, male students wore t-shirts saying ‘Get Cunts off Campus.’ George described female students’ responses to hostility: “They laughed at it! I wasn’t as offended in retrospect as I should have been. When you are 1 of 35 women in a school of 800 people, just your presence is breaking the mold, and trying to go further than that is really hard.” While most women described some level of gendered barriers, seemingly all of them spoke highly of CMC’s transition to co-ed. “I think the school really welcomed women with open arms,” Mari Adams ‘80 recalled. George shared similar sentiments: “CMC really was a place where I built lifetime friendships; many of them that are still really present today. So, I loved it.” While these women were pioneers and pacesetters, they were also just students like us—sometimes struggling just to keep up. Reflecting on her time at CMC, McCaffery recalls “a series of hard disappointments.” One of the most surprising disappointments was during her swimming exam that CMC previously required. “When I jumped in the pool to take my swim test and got to the other end, I had the basketball coach who was administering the test that day bending over and saying to me, ‘Young lady, you are far too young to be this out of breath and uncoordinated in swimming,” McCaffery shared. King shared her challenges adjusting to CMC’s student body: “All of a sudden you’re with a whole new echelon of really smart people, really accomplished people. And people who have had life experiences that are just you've never been exposed to it before.” But while her peers challenged her, she noted that “You don't know how big you can dream until you hear from other people and learn what their dreams are.” King also shared her financial struggles: “I worked all four years to help pay for college. And it was just a lot. And it was the first time I really struggled in the classroom. So that was a very difficult situation.” King recalled that she worked many part-time jobs, including at the mailroom. While CMC students today know the mailroom as “Story House,” King shed light on what Story House looked like for older generations of CMC students: “The first students at CMC were living in Story House, which was actually a farmhouse on Green beach. That's what Story House actually was. There was a woman who had an orchard and donated her house. And so the people lived in the basement; they took their meals on the ground floor.” King continued that these men “had Quonset huts: they built this temporary housing. Some people lived in the basement of Bridges Auditorium. I mean, this was a scrappy, can-do group.” It can be surprising to reflect on just how recently CMC’s all-men’s college filled with Quonset huts transitioned into co-education. While educational and workplace gender integration seems firmly established today, CMC women just decades older than us faced schools and workplaces with rapidly changing gender norms. Adams reflected, “You don't realize how recently things changed.” She described her first job after CMC: “I went into the Foreign Service only a few years before they changed the rules, so women did not have to resign when they got married.” She continued, “In my first diplomatic assignment, I was the only female diplomat in the country.” Even today, Adams discussed how “professional women always do this in financial meetings, you'll look around in a seminar room and start counting the women. I think we all do it. And just to see like, what is it? Ten percent? Twenty percent?” While the obstacles faced by the first female students at CMC might seem irrelevant today, the current absence of such obstacles serves as an important reminder of how quickly social change can occur on our campus. Hopefully, this serves to motivate present and future students in their pursuit of educational equity.