A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture: Social media companies and other organizations are looking out for themselves.

2021/04/20 Leave a comment

Needed different take on the role that social media companies play:

In March, Alexi McCammond, the newly hired editor of Teen Vogue, resigned following backlash over offensive tweets she’d sent a decade ago, beginning when she was 17. In January, Will Wilkinson lost his job as vice president for research at the center-right Niskanen Center for a satirical tweet about Republicans who wanted to hang Mike Pence. (Wilkinson was also suspended from his role as a Times Opinion contributor.)

To debate whether these punishments were fair is to commit a category error. These weren’t verdicts weighed and delivered on behalf of society. These were the actions of self-interested organizations that had decided their employees were now liabilities. Teen Vogue, which is part of Condé Nast, has remade itself in recent years as a leftist magazine built around anti-racist principles. Niskanen trades on its perceived clout with elected Republicans. In both cases, the organization was trying to protect itself, for its own reasons.

That suggests a different way of thinking about the amorphous thing we call cancel culture, and a more useful one. Cancellations — defined here as actually losing your job or your livelihood — occur when an employee’s speech infraction generates public attention that threatens an employer’s profits, influence or reputation. This isn’t an issue of “wokeness,” as anyone who has been on the business end of a right-wing mob trying to get them or their employees fired — as I have, multiple times — knows. It’s driven by economics, and the key actors are social media giants and employers who really could change the decisions they make in ways that would lead to a better speech climate for us all.

Boundaries on acceptable speech aren’t new, and they’re not narrower today than in the past. Remember the post-9/11 furor over whether you could run for office if you didn’t wear an American flag pin at all times? What is new is the role social media (and, to a lesser extent, digital news) plays in both focusing outrage and scaring employers. And this, too, is a problem of economics, not culture. Social platforms and media publishers want to attract people to their websites or shows and make sure they come back. They do this, in part, by tuning the platforms and home pages and story choices to surface content that outrages the audience.

My former Times colleague Charlie Warzel, in his new newsletter, points to Twitter’s trending box as an example of how this works, and it’s a good one if you want to see the hidden hand of technology and corporate business models in what we keep calling a cultural problem. This box is where Twitter curates its sprawling conversation, directing everyone who logs on to topics drawing unusual interest at the moment. Oftentimes that’s someone who said something stupid, or offensive — or even someone who said something innocuous only to have it misread as stupid or offensive.

The trending box blasts missives meant for one community to all communities. The original context for the tweet collapses; whatever generosity or prior knowledge the intended audience might have brought to the interaction is lost. The loss of context is supercharged by another feature of the platform: the quote-tweet, where instead of answering in the original conversation, you pull the tweet out of its context and write something cutting on top of it. (A crummier version comes when people just screenshot a tweet, so the audience can’t even click back to the original, or see the possible apology.) So the trending box concentrates attention on a particular person, already having a bad day, and the quote-tweet function encourages people to carve up the message for their own purposes.

This is not just a problem of social media platforms. Watch Fox News for a night, and you’ll see a festival of stories elevating some random local excess to national attention and inflicting terrible pain on the people who are targeted. Fox isn’t anti-cancel culture; it just wants to be the one controlling that culture.

Cancellations are sometimes intended, and deserved. Some speech should have consequences. But many of the people who participate in the digital pile-ons that lead to cancellation don’t want to cancel anybody. They’re just joining in that day’s online conversation. They’re criticizing an offensive or even dangerous idea, mocking someone they think deserves it, hunting for retweets, demanding accountability, making a joke. They aren’t trying to get anyone fired. But collectively, they do get someone fired.

In all these cases, the economics of corporations that monetize attention are colliding with the incentives of employers to avoid bad publicity. One structural way social media has changed corporate management is that it has made P.R. problems harder to ignore. Outrage that used to play out relatively quietly, through letters and emails and phone calls, now plays out in public. Hasty meetings get called, senior executives get pulled in, and that’s when people get fired.

An even more sinister version of this operates retrospectively, through search results. An employer considering a job candidate does a basic Google search, finds an embarrassing controversy from three years ago and quietly move on to the next candidate. Wokeness has particular economic power right now because corporations, correctly, don’t want to be seen as racist and homophobic, but imagine how social media would have supercharged the censorious dynamics that dominated right after 9/11, when even french fries were suspected of disloyalty.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the sociologist and cultural critic, made a great point to me about this on a recent podcast. “One of the problems right now is that social shame, which I think in and of itself is enough, usually, to discipline most people, is now tied to economic and political and cultural capital,” she said.

People should be shamed when they say something awful. Social sanctions are an important mechanism for social change, and they should be used. The problem is when that one awful thing someone said comes to define their online identity, and then it defines their future economic and political and personal opportunities. I don’t like the line that no one deserves to be defined by the worst thing they’ve ever done — tell me the body count first — but let’s agree that most of us don’t deserve to be defined by the dumbest thing we’ve ever said, forever, just because Google’s algorithm noticed that that moment got more links than the rest of our life combined.

I think this suggests a few ways to make online discourse better. Twitter should rethink its trending box, and at least consider the role quote-tweets play on the platform. (It would be easy enough to retain them as a function while throttling their virality.) Fox News should stop being, well, Fox News. All of the social media platforms need to think about the way their algorithms juice outrage and supercharge the human tendency to police group boundaries.

For months, when I logged onto Facebook, I saw the posts of a distant acquaintance who had turned into an anti-masker, and whose comment threads had turned into flame wars. This wasn’t someone I was close to, but the algorithm knew that what was being posted was generating a lot of angry reaction among our mutual friends, and it repeatedly tried to get me to react, too. These are design choices that are making society more toxic. Different choices can, and should, be made.

The rest of corporate America — and that includes my own industry — needs to think seriously about how severe a punishment it is to fire people under public conditions. When termination is for private misdeeds or poor performance, it typically stays private. When it is for something the internet is outraged about, it can shatter someone’s economic prospects for years to come. It’s always hard, from the outside, to evaluate any individual case, but I’ve seen a lot of firings that probably should have been suspensions or scoldings.

This also raises the question of our online identities, and the way strange and unexpected moments come to define them. A person’s Google results can shape the rest of that person’s life, both economically and otherwise. And yet people have almost no control over what’s shown in those results, unless they have the money to hire a firm that specializes in rehabilitating online reputations. This isn’t an easy problem to solve, but our lifelong digital identities are too important to be left to the terms and conditions of a single company, or even a few.

Finally, it would be better to focus on cancel behavior than cancel culture. There is no one ideology that gleefully mobs or targets employers online. Plenty of anti-cancel culture warriors get their retweets directing their followers to mob others. So here’s a guideline that I think would make online discourse better. Unless something that is said is truly dangerous and you actually want to see that person fired from their current job and potentially unable to find a new one — a high bar, but one that is sometimes met — you shouldn’t use social media to join an ongoing pile-on against a normal person. If it’s a politician or a cable news host or a senator, well, that’s politics. But this works differently when it’s someone unprepared for that scrutiny. We would all do better to remember that what feels like an offhand tweet to us could have real consequences for others if there are hundreds or thousands of similar tweets and articles. Scale matters.

What I’m offering here would, I hope, help ease a specific problem: the disproportionate and capricious economic punishments meted out in the aftermath of an online pile-on. It won’t end the political conflict over acceptable speech, nor should it. There have always been things we cannot say in polite society, and those things are changing, in overdue ways. The balance of demographic power is shifting, and groups that had little voice in the language and ordering of the national agenda are gaining that voice and using it.

Slowly and painfully, we are creating a society in which more people can speak and have some say over how they’re spoken of. What I hope we can do is keep that fight from serving the business models of social media platforms and the shifting priorities of corporate marketing departments.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/opinion/cancel-culture-social-media.html

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After a Year of Turmoil, Elite Universities Welcome More Diverse Freshman Classes

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

Of interest:

Jianna Curbelo attends a career-focused public high school in New York City, works at McDonald’s and lives in the Bronx with her unemployed mother, who did not graduate from college.

So when her high-school counselor and her Ph.D.-educated aunt urged her to apply to Cornell, on her path to becoming a veterinarian, she had her doubts. But she also had her hopes.

“It was one of those, ‘I’ll give it a shot, boost my ego a little bit,’” she said, laughing infectiously, of her decision to apply.

Then she got the unexpected news: She was accepted. She figured she was helped by the fact that Cornell, like hundreds of other universities, had suspended its standardized test score requirement for admission during the coronavirus pandemic. She also said she believed that protests kindled by the death of George Floyd had caught the attention of admissions officers, inspiring some to draft essay questions aimed at eliciting students’ thoughts on racial justice and the value of diversity.

“Those protests really did inspire me,” she said. “It made it seem like the times were sort of changing, in a way.”

Whether college admissions have changed for the long haul remains unclear. But early data suggests that many elite universities have admitted a higher proportion of traditionally underrepresented students this year — Black, Hispanic and those who were from lower-income communities or were the first generation in their families to go to college, or some combination — than ever before.

The gains seem to reflect a moment of national racial and social awareness not seen since the late 1960s that motivated universities to put a premium on diversity and that prodded students to expand their horizons on possible college experiences.

“I would say the likelihood is that the movement that arose in the wake of George Floyd’s murder has exerted some influence on these institutions’ admissions officers,” said Jerome Karabel, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a historian of college admission.

“But I think an equally important factor may be the effect of the pandemic on the applicant pool — they had a much broader range of low-income and minority applicants to choose from.”

Consider Jaylen Cocklin, 18, of Columbia, S.C., the son of a retired police officer and a state worker. Jaylen, whose two older brothers attend historically Black institutions, decided in middle school that he wanted to go to Harvard, but the events of the past year were a part of his thinking as he weighed his opportunities.

“It was just another thing driving me to go to Harvard and prove everyone wrong, and defy the common stereotype placed upon so many African-American males today,” he said.

He also suspected that Harvard might be thinking it had some duty to young men like him “because of the social outcry.” And, now he says, it appears that he was right.

He finds himself deciding among Harvard, Emory, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Wake Forest, Davidson and Georgetown.

The growth in minority admissions at top schools, both private universities and state flagships, has been driven in part by an overall explosion in applications there. Although the total number of students applying to college this year increased only slightly (though slightly more for Black, Hispanic and Asian students than white ones), the number of applications to top schools increased drastically across the board — by 43 percent to Harvard and 66 percent to M.I.T., for example.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, freshman applications rose by 28 percent, and even more for racial minorities — by 48 percent for African-Americans, by 33 percent for Hispanic students and by 16 percent for American Indian students.

The easing of the reliance on standardized tests, which critics say often work to the advantage of more educated and affluent families who can afford tutors and test prep, was most likely the most important factor in encouraging minority applicants.

Only 46 percent of applications this year came from students who reported a test score, down from 77 percent last year, according to Common App, the not-for-profit organization that offers the application used by more than 900 schools. First-generation, lower-income, as well as Black, Hispanic and Native American students were much less likely than others to submit their test scores on college applications.

Schools had been dropping the testing requirement for years, but during the pandemic a wave of 650 schools joined in. In most cases, a student with good scores could still submit them and have them considered; a student who had good grades and recommendations but fell short on test scores could leave them out. 

Most schools have announced that they will continue the test-optional experiment next year, as the normal rhythm of the school year is still roiled by the pandemic. It is unclear whether the shift foretells a permanent change in how students are selected.

Gabriella Codrington, 17, a Black student at Bard, a selective public high school in New York City, submitted her SAT score only to her “safety” schools, like the University of Delaware and Temple University, where she thought it would help her application. She withheld it from more selective schools like Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and N.Y.U., emphasizing her grades and resilience in the face of cancer, now in remission. “It definitely gave me a bit more relief,” she said of the test-optional policy.

Neither her father, a doorman, nor her mother, a sales associate, went to college. She has been admitted to N.Y.U.

Jaylen Cocklin’s family (his father went to a historically Black college and his mother to a Christian one) encouraged him to aim high. 

He “just grinded” for the SAT, he said, using a free online program, books and lessons on YouTube, and drove 45 miles because of the pandemic to take the first of two SAT tests. His score was high enough that he felt it would help him stand out at top schools, so he submitted it.

In his application essay, he wrote about the “struggle to be who I was” at A.C. Flora High School, in suburban Columbia, S.C. “I’ve been quite stereotyped by being African-American, the common stereotypes — thuggish, hoodish, looking down on what African-Americans can do,” he said.

But he also had to deal with being stereotyped as “whitewashed.” He wrote about his efforts to find a balance.

As students like Jaylen and Gabriella told their stories, admissions officers listened.

“You could tell the story of America through the eyes of all these young people, and how they dealt with the times, Black Lives Matter, the wave of unemployment and the uncertainties of the political moment, wanting to make a difference,” said MJ Knoll-Finn, senior vice president for enrollment management at New York University.

At N.Y.U., this year’s admitted class is about 29 percent Black or Hispanic students, up from 27 percent last year, and 20 percent first-generation students, up from 15 percent.

At Harvard, the proportion of admitted students who are Black jumped to 18 percent from 14.8 percent last year. If all of them enrolled, there would be about 63 more Black students in this year’s freshman class than if they were admitted at last year’s rate. Asian-Americans saw the second biggest increase, to 27.2 percent from 24.5 percent, which could be meaningful if a lawsuit accusing Harvard of systematically discriminating against Asian-Americans is taken up by the Supreme Court.

The percentage of Black students offered a spot at the University of Southern California rose to 8.5 percent from 6 percent, and Latino students to 18 percent from 15 percent.

Stu Schmill, dean of admissions at M.I.T., said the school did not release the breakdown of the admitted class because it was not the final enrolling class. “But I can tell you that there is a higher percentage of students of color this year than last,” he said.

A number of schools did not report admissions figures by race, instead reporting nonwhite “students of color” (including Asians) as a group, which generally showed an increase.

Once students actually accept an offer of admission and enroll, the diversity tally may look different, reflecting the difference between students admitted and where those students choose to enroll.

Some admissions experts worry that making standardized tests, like the SAT, optional will make it more difficult to select top students, especially at a time of widespread grade inflation. But when tests were required, “students were taking themselves out of the running,” said Cassie Magesis, director of post-secondary access for the Urban Assembly, a network of small schools that includes the one that Jianna Curbelo attends.

Admissions directors said that in the absence of test scores, they drilled deeper into not only high school grades, but also the rigor of courses taken in high school as well as personal essays and recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors.

Some hired a small army of application readers, like N.Y.U., which added 50 new readers, more than doubling its regular reading staff.

Even some admissions directors who think that standardized tests have been misused have mixed feelings about eliminating them altogether

“In some ways, I would say good riddance to the SAT,” said Joy St. John, dean of admission and financial aid at Wellesley College. “It feels like we just can’t stop gaslighting disadvantaged students.”

Still, she said testing could identify students who rose above their environment, or who excelled in certain subjects, like math and science. “There are aspects I will miss if we don’t have it,” she said. As imperfect as the process is, the admissions directors said they welcomed students taking a chance on challenging schools.

Ms. Knoll-Finn of N.Y.U. said. “Why not reach for the stars and see what you can get?”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/us/minority-acceptance-ivy-league-cornell.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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Japan’s proposed immigration law revisions deal fresh blow to refugees

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

Of note:

While Japan accepts very few refugee applications annually, legal changes designed to crack down on what the government says are abuses of the asylum process are expected to make it even harder for genuine refugees to find shelter in the country.

Japan has been criticized by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for accepting only around 1 percent of applications it receives. In 2020, it certified just 47 people as refugees out of the 3,936 applications lodged.

Moradi, an Iranian who fled to Japan in 2007 and declined to give his full name, was granted refugee status last year after winning a case at the Tokyo High Court to conclude a 13-year legal struggle. He filed a total of three applications and two lawsuits.

“I felt like I was reborn after spending so many days just enduring. I plan to live in this country for the rest of my life,” he said through a Japanese interpreter.

The 56-year-old converted from Islam to Christianity and said he would be considered an apostate and could even face execution if he returns to Iran. Moradi now lives in Saitama Prefecture with his Iranian wife, who he later brought to Japan, and works full-time at a recycling company.

According to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, of those who were recognized as refugees by Japan between 2010 and 2018, about 9 percent, or 19 people, had applied multiple times.

But Japan’s parliament on Friday started deliberations on a bill that aims to amend the immigration law so that foreigners can be deported after they have applied for refugee status three times.

As of January 2020, there were around 82,000 foreigners illegally overstaying in Japan. Some 10,000 repatriate annually after receiving deportation orders but about 3,000 stay in the country each year, making repeated asylum applications as deportation procedures are automatically halted for people claiming refugee status.

Tomoko Uraki, a lawyer representing Moradi, said the revisions could result in the deportation of refugees who, like her client, should be protected.

“People who would be recognized as refugees in other countries are not being recognized in Japan, but that part of the law is not being revised,” she said.

Shogo Watanabe, a lawyer who specializes in helping people from Myanmar apply for refugee status, notes that none of the 2,000 Myanmarese who applied for asylum in the past three years was approved.

“It is clearly wrong to push through a provision allowing deportation after the third application before carrying out the proper practice of refugee recognition,” he said.

In a joint statement dated March 31, a group of United Nations’ experts called on the Japanese government to review its proposed revisions, saying they failed to meet international standards from the standpoint of human rights.

The bill lacks provisions specifying a maximum detention period and instead contains penalties for foreigners who refuse to return to their countries of origin, including up to one year in prison for those who physically resist while on an airplane.

Source: Japan’s proposed immigration law revisions deal fresh blow to refugees

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@Justin_Ling #COVID19: How did it come to this?

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

One of the best overviews I have seen:

After a year of struggling with this pandemic, science has developed a relatively good grasp of COVID-19.

We know that it is difficult to catch the virus from surfaces: Sanitizing your groceries and obsessively covering your hands in hand sanitizer is probably unnecessary.

We know community spread is driven, in large part, by large outbreaks and super-spreader events: Big gatherings lead to explosions of cases.

We know that indoor transmission is particularly dicey because the virus is easily aerosolized: Many people can get sick very quickly if they congregate indoors.

We know that outdoor transmission is possible, but unlikely: A combination of air flow and UV light means the virus can’t get very far.

We know vaccines are incredibly effective and safe, but that herd immunity will be needed to stop community spread: They can protect the elderly but won’t stop community spread until the vast majority of people are vaccinated.

While there’s clearly room for smart people to disagree on the details of those conclusions, they have been born out by an emerging body of science. New variants have changed the math a bit, but haven’t fundamentally altered those facts. Early in the pandemic, when these truths and solutions were murkier and less clear, absolute lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and border closures were the safe and prudent choices. Advice on washing your hands and not touching your face were reasonable, cautious, suggestions.

It’s a year later. Those five facts are now incredibly well documented in the scientific literature.

Understanding more about the virus has allowed more effective strategies to come into focus: Avoid indoor gatherings whenever possible. When they can’t be avoided, have as few people indoors as possible, keep people apart from each other, make sure they mask up, and circulate air with good HEPA filters. Where possible, move people outside—and actively encourage the outdoors as an alternative for people who may ignore good public health advice.

Those solutions, of course, are easy to write and hard to implement. Warehouses, prisons, meat processing plants, greenhouses, schools: Even when these places follow the rules most of the time, religious adherence around the clock can be hard to maintain.

So that’s why mass, randomized, testing and aggressive contact tracing is necessary to catch outbreaks before the virus moves down the chains of contact and creates new outbreaks. Shutting down those locations where the outbreaks occur is necessary. When things slip through the cracks and community spread begins, short-term circuit-breaker lockdowns should be a last resort to get cases under control.

There’s no real debate about this. These strategies work: As Atlantic Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and a host of other states have proved them effective.

And yet, most of Canada is in the midst of a punishing third wave. Public health officials continue to insist washing our hands will get us out of this mess. Politicians warn us to stay indoors, avoid the outside.

Ontario’s health-care system is hanging on by a thread. Other provinces could be in a similar spot soon.

We are here, in large part, because many of our politicians have ignored the core facts of the COVID-19 virus and the main strategies that will clearly fight the pandemic.

Heading into the spring, off the back of the second wave, the premiers of these provinces have insisted that they were special. That they could reopen the economy—and brag to their voter base about their rosy jobs numbers—without consequence. The leaders of every province west of New Brunswick have laboured under the belief that their gyms, places of worship, and workplaces could open, even amid uncontrolled community transmission, and nobody would get sick. These governments have been sure that they have grown more clever, more agile, more adept than the virus.

Those governments have been wrong, and people have died because of it.

And when things have gone wrong, all the things governments promised us they had done turned to sand. In most of the country, mass testing was promised and not delivered—Ontario and Quebec require appointments, and have not expanded their testing capacity in any significant way since last year. Contact tracing has been essentially abandoned on a provincial basis. Circuit-breaker lockdowns didn’t touch the industries most responsible for spreading the virus.

Governments have begged us to stay at home—except if you need to go to work in an Amazon warehouse (600 cases); the Cargill chicken processing plant (82 cases); the Saskatchewan Penitentiary (more than 260 cases); St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Parish, where congregants could gather without masks (10 cases); Mega Gym, which the Quebec government permitted to re-open (400 cases), and so on.

It is infuriating to find ourselves in the third wave, only to learn that we haven’t learned a damn thing.

Governments have pointed to the variants as some terrifying change in the equation. And, yet, look at Ontario’s data: This is just a ramped-up version of the same virus we’ve been fighting since March, 2020.

In late February of this year, in the lull between waves, nearly 60 per cent of cases could be attributed to a specific outbreak and/or a close contact of someone who tested positive. (A bit more than a third of cases had no known epidemiological link, a failure in and of itself.) In late March, as the third wave was in full swing, that proportion remained unchanged.

Where those outbreaks have occurred haven’t changed much, either.

Around 30 per cent were in congregate living or care spaces: Hospitals, prisons, shelters. Around 30 per cent were in schools. The remainder, about four-in-10 outbreaks, were workplaces.

Recently, Ontario has provided more visibility on the types of workplaces experiencing outbreaks: Hairdressers, restaurants and retail stores are responsible for vanishingly few superspreader events—between the three, they caused just eight per cent of overall outbreaks.

Even as case counts were climbing, and outbreaks were being reported across the province, people congregated on patios at bars and restaurants. In mid-March, before that naughty behaviour was banned, bars and restaurants reported eight outbreaks across the province: 37 cases in total. (This proportion hasn’t changed since last summer, when case counts were low and bars and restaurants were open.) That same week, there were 66 outbreaks in warehouses, food processing plants, and farms: 479 cases.

Dig into the data, as the Globe & Mail has done, and the absurdity becomes more acute: these outbreaks are happening in facilities that manufacture sporting goods. A retail marketing firm. An Amazon warehouse.

Many outbreaks also occurred in settings run by governments. There has been widespread transmission of the virus inside prisons and jails—which governments have been criminally inept at preventing. Shelters, too: Ontario’s data shows there are 32 ongoing outbreaks in shelters across the province.

This story is about the same from one province to the next. The data speaks for itself: Workplaces and schools are driving transmission of this virus. Were the whole country to lock themselves in their closets, except for those students and “essential” workers, the crisis would continue.

An emerging body of research explains what’s happening here. From the start of the pandemic, leaders have told us that the concern is about the transmission of droplets—and, rightly so, because the early science suggested that saliva particles from speaking, coughing or sneezing was the main driver of transmission. Good science is increasingly telling us that the virus is aeresolized.

That means we ought to be less fearful of tiny blobs of the virus covering everything—our hands, our faces, our picnic blankets—and more worried about the air around us. If you think about the virus that way, it becomes immediately obvious how much less risky it is to sit with some friends for a picnic, or on a restaurant patio. Conversely, how risky it is to run a warehouse with hundreds of workers, exerting themselves.

Have governments addressed this? No. Instead, governments have proffered curfews, as though the virus hunts at night. Parks have been closed. Camping has been banned. Outdoor mask mandates have been implemented. Outdoor gatherings limited. Police patrols to harass people out for walks.

Even as projections have shown Ontario teetering on the brink of a deadly crisis, Premier Doug Ford’s solution was to limit outdoor gatherings and to shut outdoor recreation sites.

But here’s the rub: Provinces know outbreaks aren’t happening in parks, or on patios. Quebec public health officials have acknowledged that they have no evidence to prove transmission is happening outdoors. Peer-reviewed studies have said that, on the high end, some eight per cent of global COVID-19 cases were linked to transmission outdoors. On the other end, Ireland studied its own data and found 0.1 per cent of cases occurred outside. Air quality monitoring done in Italy in the height of the second wave found the prevalence of the virus in the open air waseither negligible or not high enough to lead to transmission. (Though researchers admitted that dynamics could change in very crowded areas.)

Scaremongering about outdoor transmission, and instituting curfews is a feat of social engineering. This an effort to ignore the data, withhold information, and twist the facts to scare us.

The conspiracy-minded will see that as an exercise in population control: Politicians getting their jollies off by playing dictator.

The reality is more mundane—governments are doing this because they are frozen with indecision. Actually acknowledging the reality of the data means acknowledging this catastrophe was caused by governments’ idiotic reopening plans: Plans that were warned against by public officials at the time. Doing that means taking action that will hurt employment numbers, which could hurt our politicians fragile egos. Confronting this data and science also means admitting that all of our advice about washing your hands and not touching your face has been useless. And accepting that reality means provinces requiring sick leave, so people can go home if they’re ill.

Governments are loath to do any of that. They would rather shower us in meaningless pablum about how we, as citizens, need to do our part. The implication, of course, is that we are to blame for this crisis. That it’s us wayward youth who are driving this pandemic. Our lack of personal responsibility means they have to ground us to our rooms. Stay home, for god’s sake!

If our politicians stop blaming us for outbreaks, we may start blaming them.

And for good reason.

We need to stop talking to people like they are infants to be controlled. Especially when the politicians issuing these stay-at-home orders have zero credibility with which to be lecturing anyone. Any bit of trust people have in Doug Ford, Francois Legault, Scott Moe, Brian Pallister, and John Horgan has been shredded, and lit on fire.

In Atlantic Canada, the territories, and in Indigenous communities across the country, politicians of various political stripe show what real leadership looks like. How effective management means trusting the public while also accepting responsibility.

The rest of our provincial politicians need to act immediately to undo the damage they have enabled. Businesses need to be shut, unless they are absolutely essential. Those that need to remain open need stringent measures to deal with air quality. Given the pressure it puts on parents and students, schools should probably remain open: But, again, actual measures need to be taken to reduce the risk of that aerosolized transmission.

And we need to provide clear, coherent advice to people on what to do. Advice that follows the science.

We need to avoid indoor gatherings as much as possible. We should wear masks whenever possible. We should give each other two metres of distance. We should stay home when we have any symptoms, check our temperatures daily, and get tested if we feel sick.

But we also need to tell people what is safe. And it is very safe to go outside—it is extraordinarily safe, in particular, if you give people a little extra space and avoid crowded areas.

Have a picnic. Hold a barbecue in your backyard. Go for a walk. Play tennis. Go camping.

People need hope. Lying to them won’t engineer a solution. Politicians need to do their job.

Source: How did it come to this?

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Foundation for Black Communities seeks $200 million from federal budget to support Black-led charities

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

Interesting. During the Conservatives Community Historical Recognition Program, Canadian Ukrainians argued successfully for a World War 1 internment endowment, but for $10 million.

Their main argument was to provide greater flexibility in responding to proposals, which largely has been born out with reasonably transparency on the projects funded. It was easier for the government to agree, given that the Ukrainian Canadian community had an established foundation, the Taras Shevchenko Founcation, with a track record and established governance structures.

But $200m is a big ask:

Eugenia Addy remembers what it was like as a young Black girl in Toronto’s The East Mall, trying to envision her future.

“I grew up in one of the communities that we do work in, and really not being able to see myself represented anywhere on TV [or] in my textbooks,” Addy said. “So to really believe that I could be a scientist or an engineer was something that I literally had to dream about, because I couldn’t see it in reality.”

While pursuing her PhD in chemistry, she met Francis Jeffers, the founder of Visions of Science, an organization that brings interactive science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programming to kids in marginalized communities. Now as the CEO, Addy aims to open doors for others like her.

Umoja operates with just three staff members and a dedicated team of volunteers. Munyezamu says the organization is struggling financially to keep up with so many responsibilities.

“One thing I do every day is fundraising, fundraising, fundraising. Every month. We don’t know where we’re going to get the money for next month,” said Munyezamu.

Source: Foundation for Black Communities seeks $200 million from federal budget to support Black-led charities

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Lisée – Et maintenant: l’endoctrinement [on federal antiracism training guide]

2021/04/19 Leave a comment

Jean-François Lisée picks up on Brian Lilley’s critique (LILLEY: Feds’ anti-racism training deals with political agendas, nothing else), albeit in a more sophisticated mannner:

Les fonctionnaires fédéraux ont-ils droit à la liberté de conscience ? Pour peu qu’ils soient respectueux des normes et des lois et de leurs collègues de travail, ont-ils droit à leurs propres opinions sur l’histoire de leur pays et sur l’état des relations raciales ? La réponse est désormais non. Il existe une doctrine d’État que les fonctionnaires doivent apprendre et internaliser, quelles que soient leurs expériences de vie ou leurs visions du monde. Un document fédéral officiel obtenu par le Toronto Sun grâce à la Loi sur l’accès à l’information est à la fois fascinant et scandaleux. Il s’agit du Parcours d’apprentissage dans le cadre de la lutte contre le racisme. La chose irait de soi si l’apprentissage en question portait sur les pratiques discriminatoires à éviter, les bienfaits des politiques d’accès à l’égalité, les normes, les recours et les sanctions. Mais le document s’attaque aux opinions qu’on peut avoir — et qu’on ne doit pas avoir — sur les causes, l’histoire et la définition du racisme. Les participants sont appelés à « apprendre, [à] désapprendre et [à] réapprendre ».

Par exemple, peut-être avez-vous la conviction que le Canada fut fondé sur une volonté de créer un pays distinct de l’expérience états-unienne, mettant en équilibre les intérêts de plusieurs anciennes colonies, dont le Québec francophone, et voulant maintenir un lien fort avec la couronne britannique ? Peut-être pensiez-vous que, parmi les graves imperfections du pays, il y eut la mauvaise part faite aux Autochtones et des pratiques répréhensibles envers des minorités de couleur ?

Si vous jugiez que, contrairement à l’impact structurel de l’esclavage dans l’histoire états-unienne, ces événements malheureux ne constituaient pas l’essence même de l’existence du Canada, l’État canadien vous rabroue officiellement. Vous êtes porteurs d’un « mythe » et de « déformation des faits historiques » qu’il faut désapprendre. La réalité, présentée comme un « fait » qui n’est pas ouvert au débat, est que le racisme est au cœur de l’expérience canadienne, un de ses fondements. L’existence même du Canada est une agression.

Trudeauiste bon teint, peut-être oserez-vous faire valoir que le multiculturalisme est une politique officielle depuis un demi-siècle et que le Canada est en passe de s’affranchir de son passé honteux ? Vous avez tort. Je cite : « Chaque institution était et est toujours utilisée pour prouver que la race existe et pour promouvoir l’idée que la race blanche est au sommet de la hiérarchie des races et que toutes les autres lui sont inférieures. » Chaque institution était et est toujours, en 2021, raciste. Et si vous tiquiez devant le concept de racisme systémique, cramponnez-vous, car la doctrine officielle a franchi un nouveau cap. Le document décrit ainsi la situation actuelle du racisme canadien : « Un groupe a le pouvoir de pratiquer une discrimination systématique au moyen des politiques et pratiques institutionnelles. » Oui, on est passés de systémique à systématique.

La doctrine vous rabroue doublement si vous osez procéder à des comparaisons avec les États-Unis sur le nombre des victimes ou sur l’intensité du dommage causé. Le document est explicite : « Le racisme est tout aussi grave au Canada. » Fin de la discussion. C’est un dogme.

Il y est aussi question d’esclavage, et le document prend bien soin d’indiquer que ce fléau fut répandu au Canada, y compris en Nouvelle-France, ce qui est vrai. Les fonctionnaires qui l’ignoraient peut-être sont aussi informés que les Autochtones furent victimes de l’esclavage. Mais le document omet de signaler que les nations autochtones pratiquaient l’esclavage entre elles avant l’arrivée des Européens, et après, et qu’elles ont participé à la traite des Noirs sur le continent. Je souhaite bonne chance au fonctionnaire qui oserait soulever ce fait historique lors d’une formation.

Puisque le racisme est défini étroitement, comme l’oppression d’une race par une autre, et jamais d’une ethnie par une autre, il n’est nulle part question du fait que les Britanniques, des Blancs, ont voulu déporter d’autres Blancs, des Acadiens, ou que les Canadiens français furent pendant deux siècles victimes de discrimination. Le colonialisme est un élément fondateur du pays (c’est incontestable), mais pas la Conquête (c’est loufoque). Notons que l’antisémitisme est aussi passé sous silence, un angle mort problématique dans la culture woke.

On y parle évidemment du privilège blanc, qui peut être personnel, institutionnel ou structurel, intentionnel ou non. Tous les fonctionnaires blancs doivent donc apprendre qu’ils sont, par défaut, coupables de racisme. C’est dans leur nature. Le caractère univoque et culpabilisateur de la formation est à couper le souffle.

Prenons un instant pour réfléchir à l’existence même de ce document officiel.

Nous avions entendu Justin Trudeau déclarer à plusieurs reprises qu’il avait, lui, la conviction que toutes les institutions canadiennes étaient coupables de racisme systémique. Il est rare que le premier ministre d’un pays accable ainsi la totalité des institutions qu’il a pour charge de diriger, de représenter et, au besoin, de réformer.

Mais bon, c’était son avis personnel. Que ces notions soient débattues dans les universités, dans les panels, à la radio ou dans les journaux est une chose. Mais il ne s’agit plus désormais d’opinions discutables parmi d’autres. Les fonctionnaires fédéraux sont désormais contraints de participer à des formations où on leur dit que cette vision du monde est la bonne, que c’est la ligne juste, et que s’ils pensent autrement, ils doivent désapprendre, pour mieux apprendre. Il s’agit ni plus ni moins que d’endoctrinement.

On voudrait savoir qui a décidé que la théorie critique de la race était devenue doctrine d’État ? À quel moment et dans quel forum ? Qui a acquiescé à cela ? Et surtout, comment infirmer cette décision absurde qui est une atteinte frontale à la liberté de conscience ?

Source: Et maintenant: l’endoctrinement

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For immigrants like me, the ‘Great Pretend’ doesn’t work anymore

2021/04/17 1 Comment

Good reflective piece:

My journey began 8,290 miles away, in India. I grew up in Mumbai, completed my studies, and first set foot in the United States as a young woman in my 20s. When I boarded that flight to California, I did so with my sister’s advice booming in my head: wear long sleeves to hide the henna ink from a recent wedding. But she was really making a bigger point: hide who you are, because they won’t understand you.

My sister’s advice was jarring but well-intentioned. The truth was, I didn’t even need the warning: already, for months, standing in front of my mirror practicing each night, I’d worked to stifle my Indian accent. It was the start of my journey as a performer –learning when and how to shed my identity, and trying to anticipate when it was safe to let my guard down and reveal my true self. I call it “the Great Pretend.”

I feel lucky that I’ve made America my home for many reasons. I’m blessed because I’ve been embraced by so many American mentors, leaders, colleagues and friends. I’m also blessed because only here would my story be possible. My naturalization ceremony 13 years ago was a deeply emotional experience, a moment of incredible belonging. But like so many immigrants, I have always cherished the fact that America wasn’t just a place but also an idea: unmatched possibilities ever in search of their own perfection, for new and next generations to write.

America, by definition, isn’t a finished product — it’s a high ideal purposefully set just out of reach so we can all, — generation by generation, help to pull the country ever closer to its founding ideals.

And for my daughters’ generation if not for mine, I’ve realized that I have some work to do, myself.

It starts with a confession. For all my years in America, I’ve been acting out “the great pretend” — the code-switching, concealing, and compromising that women like me have subjected ourselves to for decades, voluntarily. After 20 years, I wish I could say this daily ritual of cultural camouflage is gone, but it’s not. My Indian code-switching is now as much a part of my identity as the henna ink I’d once tried to hide from passersby in my new home.

But now I realize how important it is for all of us to shed those masks, to recognize the unique situations and unconscious biases experienced by multi-hyphenated professionals, so that we can all be better, do better and work together better.

The bottom line: empowering others begins by empowering yourself.

“The Great Pretend” doesn’t just encapsulate the actions many immigrants take to avoid making others uncomfortable. It’s the often unconscious and unintended– but nonetheless injurious –interactions with peers and even allies that we let go or let slide because we don’t want to rock the boat.

Act I. A cherished colleague compliments my work and my leadership, by suggesting “it must stem from” my “service-oriented culture.” Another colleague assumes I was skilled at math because I’m Indian. A new acquaintance mentions how “polite” Asian cultures are. And of course, there are the many times I walk into a meeting as a senior executive, and a stranger assumes that my younger and more junior, white male colleague is the senior leader and my boss.

Act II. I am invited to be among the feted at a summit celebrating powerful women. I enter the big ballroom to meet my fellow honorees. I feel instantly like a tiny drop of cocoa in a frothy blonde latté. The organizers have assembled us to celebrate a future which is decidedly female, but the participants are dominantly white and native born. How does this continue to happen in the United States when women of color will outnumber white women 53% to 44% by 2060?

Act III. I’m in a meeting of my peers, discussing a vexing issue, working to form a consensus. We think we’ve arrived at an answer. One of my colleagues invokes the old LIFE Cereal ad: “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” The room erupts in laughter, and I join in too. But in my head, unspoken, all I can think is: Who the heck is Mikey? Growing up in India, television was a once or twice a month luxury, usually a chance to see movies released years before in the United States.

1970s, nostalgic commercial pop culture is lost on me, as it is to many of the 17% of the American workforce who are foreign-born and raised. Isn’t it time our shorthand and colloquialisms evolve to include the nearly one in five workers who have lived something approximating my immigrant experience?

I want Act IV of my story to wrap up the plot with a twist: it’s time to stop acting — acting surprised, acting oblivious, or acting like someone else — to blend in.

Empowering ourselves means ending “the great pretend” and pointing out our perspectives to well-intentioned people—because it’s the only way we will all learn.

Empowering ourselves means incorporating the reality of intersectional identities — among increasingly heterogenous workplaces — into the core human relations and culture-building functions of any organization. Not because it’s politically correct, but because it benefits productivity and morale. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the smart thing to do.

It shouldn’t take a tragedy like the mass shooting in Atlanta and the many other recent examples of anti-Asian violence for us to recognize that some life lessons need to be discussed openly — every day. Why? Very simply, because I want my Indian-American daughters to grow up knowing that pretending is never normal. And when the day comes, I don’t want them to wear long sleeves to cover the Henna drawing. I want them to write their story in bold ink the whole world can see and understand. That’s what we owe each other — and that’s what we owe the America we love.

Source: For immigrants like me, the ‘Great Pretend’ doesn’t work anymore

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Douglas Todd: Canadian real-estate market better for foreign investors than locals, admits housing secretary

2021/04/17 Leave a comment

Ouch!

Canadians can be grateful Ottawa’s parliamentary secretary for housing isn’t afraid of saying what’s on his mind in front of a microphone.

Liberal apparatchiks must be going squirrely after loquacious MP Adam Vaughan inadvertently outed what has been the party’s real scheme on housing for six years — pushing a policy that only worsens extreme unaffordability in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Source: Douglas Todd: Canadian real-estate market better for foreign investors than locals, admits housing secretary

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Canada has right to turn back asylum-seekers at U.S. land border points, appeals court rules

2021/04/17 Leave a comment

Looks like a defeat for the more “anecdotal” approach of focussing on individual cases rather than the broader administrative oversight issue:

In a setback for refugee advocates, the Federal Court of Appeal has rejected the argument that it is unconstitutional for Canada to turn back refugees at the U.S. land border and prevent them from seeking asylum in this country.

The court sided with the federal government Thursday in overturning a lower court decision that had called into question the future of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), amid arguments that the United States cannot be considered a safe country for asylum seekers.

The decision will have devastating effects on would-be refugee claimants, their advocates say.

“The real consequences of this decision rest with those refugee claimants who are being returned to U.S. detention facilities after being turned back and facing harm both in jail and in the U.S. asylum process,” said Amanda Aziz of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers.

“What is lost in this decision are the people who will continue to face real and severe harm because of the ongoing operation of the STCA.”

Under the bilateral pact, Canada and the U.S. each recognize the other country as a safe place to seek protection.

That means Canada can turn back potential refugees who arrive at land ports of entry along the Canada-U. S. border on the basis they should pursue their claims in the States, the country where they first arrived.

The agreement, which took effect in 2004, was originally touted by officials in both countries as a way to curb “asylum shopping.” However, critics have long argued that the U.S. asylum system is cruel and inhumane — critiques that grew louder during the Trump administration.

In July, the Federal Court found it unconstitutional to ban would-be claimants from attempting to enter either country at official border crossings, saying the impacts of the policy “shock the conscience.”

Justice Ann Marie McDonald had given Ottawa six months to respond and fix the policy to make sure it complies with the Canadian charter before declaring the accord invalid. That deadline was later extended at the request of the government while the appeal was being heard.

However, in its decision released Thursday, Canada’s appeal court said lawyers for asylum seekers and their supporters focused on the wrong issues in challenging the law’s constitutionality.

It said there are proper checks and balances in the legislative scheme to ensure Canadian laws and the charter are upheld, and it’s within the government’s authority to make regulations designating a country as safe for refugees.

Instead of using individual refugees’ experiences to show the bilateral pact itself violated their Charter rights, said the appeal court, lawyers for the litigants should have made a case of how existing administrative oversight has failed to safeguard their rights.

“The legislative scheme as a whole, assuming it is operated properly, is designed to protect fundamental human rights, including charter rights,” wrote Justice David Stratas in a unanimous decision on behalf of the three-member panel.

“Based on the record before us, to the extent that detrimental effects are being suffered by persons being returned to the United States, the legislative scheme as a whole is not to blame.”

The federal government welcomed the decision.

“Canada remains firmly committed to upholding a fair and compassionate refugee protection system and the STCA remains a comprehensive means for the compassionate, fair, and orderly handling of asylum claims at the Canada-U.S. land border,” said Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair in a joint statement.

In its ruling, the appeal court said Parliament created a mechanism to monitor the designated country’s compliance on an ongoing basis.

Although the law doesn’t specify what continuing review means, who should conduct it and what should be examined in a review, a policy was developed for the assessment based on a wide variety of governmental and non-governmental sources.

The court said immigration officers also have a number of powers and discretions to make exemptions to accept claims by individuals who would otherwise be ineligible to cross into Canada and seek asylum under the Safe Third Country Agreement.

As well, refugee claimants have access to the Federal Court if they believe the circumstances of their removal warrant the court’s intervention.

“In this case, there was no evidence that could support a finding that the treatment of returnees to the United States at the Canada-United States border ‘shocks the conscience,’” said the appeal court.

“There is evidence of individual cases of substandard treatment but nothing that rises to the very high level required by the ‘shocks the conscience’ standard.”

In 2007, three advocacy groups — the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches — took Ottawa to federal court and successfully had the U.S. declared unsafe for refugees.

However, the decision was later overturned on appeal, largely on the grounds that the groups failed to find a lead individual litigant who was directly impacted by the policy.

In 2017, those groups returned to the court with a group of asylum seekers whose access to Canadian asylum was denied under the Safe Third Country Agreement to support their arguments.

This appeal court said some of the evidence, although voluminous, is piecemeal and individualized and, thus, is problematic for drawing system-wide inferences concerning the situation in the U.S.

“The value of evidence is not measured by the pound,” Justice Stratas wrote. “The evidence of the particular treatment of ten individuals — all selected by the claimants — cannot itself provide a basis for making system-wide inferences.”

Citing a previous court case that found psychological suffering inherent in the plight of refugees fleeing persecution, Stratas wrote: “One must ask whether sending refugee claimants back to the United States actually increased psychological suffering above this inherent level.”

Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees said the court’s findings were disappointing.

“The court heard the evidence of the very horrific experiences of people who were sent back to the U.S. The conditions in detention were found to be completely unacceptable by the federal court judge. Those experiences were not engaged by this court,” said Dench.

“Those experiences, the rights abuses and their suffering don’t seem to be heard in this (appeal) court.”

Source: Canada has right to turn back asylum-seekers at U.S. land border points, appeals court rules

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Wells: Emmanuel Macron, l’ENA, and the old weird France

2021/04/17 Leave a comment

Interesting take by Paul Wells:

We haven’t updated you on French President Emmanuel Macron in a while. It’s not going great. The next presidential election is a year away and polls suggest Macron could lose to Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist Ralliement National, the successor to her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National. The older Le Pen made it to the second round of presidential elections in 2002, the younger in 2017. Each time respectable opinion told French voters they must vote against Le Pen to save the Republic; both times voters did as they were told. The second time the result was Macron’s presidency. He can’t be sure it will work again. He’d become France’s third consecutive one-term president. His successor would open a can of worms. A belated sequel to Trump and Brexit.

Macron needs to get his mojo back. His choice of project is surprising. Last week he announced the closure of France’s École nationale d’administration, or ENA. It’s a graduate school for the bright young men and women who will form the senior ranks of France’s public service. Four of its graduates have become president. Nine have been prime minister. Countless others run government departments, city halls, banks, retail giants, museums. Because énarques (as ENA alumni are called) are so superbly adaptable—super-generalists, the Swiss army knives of the country’s management apparatus—they tend to flit from one job to another, with little apparent connection between positions except that each is the sort of job an énarque would have.

L’ENA is also the school Macron attended. The school that made his presidency possible, certainly the only thing that made his presidency possible. There’s drama in this assault on what made him. Something almost oedipal. It’s like when Ralph Klein had the Alberta hospital where he was born demolished. It’s as if Justin Trudeau had closed McGill University, or some ski lodge at Whistler, or whatever made him what he is today. Twenty-four Sussex? Actually, come to think of it, he has closed 24 Sussex. Hey, wait a minute…

But I digress. To an outsider, it’s hardly obvious why a stalled politician would close a fancy school. The answer hardly seems to match the question. The explanation lies in the distinctive place l’ENA occupies in the French cultural myth. As for why Macron would be the guy who’d decide to pull the trigger… well, therein lies a tale. For one thing, his reform project goes back quite literally to the day Macron graduated from the school 17 years ago.

This will take some telling. I’ve met a number of énarques. The school admits foreign students, so the odd Canadian gets in and graduates. French graduates sometimes find themselves posted to the stately French embassy on Sussex Drive, next door to 24. The current ambassador, Kareen Rispal, just won a prize for alumnae who dedicate themselves to advancing women’s rights. Énarques are, with no exception that I’ve met, cool, eloquent, poised in complex situations. Absolutely superb talkers, but not pushy. They know they’ll get their chance to shine. They always have. I once got invited to speak to alumni of the ENA and one of its main feeder schools, the Institut d’Etudes politiques de Paris, which I attended for a year on a lark ages ago. I’ve rarely been so nervous before a speaking gig.

To get into l’ENA, you have to pass a tough battery of written and oral exams on law, economics, public finances, current events, the European Union and more. Students typically study for a year at a prominent university simply to prepare for the exams. If you fail you’re free to try again the following year, but there is no other recourse or appeal. French higher education is bracingly unsentimental. One of Nicolas Sarkozy’s speechwriters famously failed the entry exam three times as a young man and has carried an epic grudge against the place ever since.

Students spend two school years at the school, divided between courses in Paris, courses at the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and work terms in government departments. At the end, another brutal round of exams. If you finish in the top 15 of a class of 100-odd, you get to pick your spot in the most prestigious departments in government. Finish much lower and you may wonder whether l’ENA was worth the trouble.

The point of it all is that social connections are no help. You can’t survive all these tough exams because you come from the right family or you have the right accent. L’ENA was founded in 1945 as France crawled from the rubble of occupation and liberation. The old French civil service was like old bureaucracies everywhere: file clerks, stenographers and power brokers who landed jobs for life because they knew someone or had a cousin return a favour. A prewar minister of education, Jean Zay, came up with plans for a school to replace all this cronyism and inertia with something more merit-based. An elite public-service corps, chosen by merit and trained with care. But after the Nazi invasion Zay was arrested by the collaborationist Vichy regime for resisting the occupation and for being a Jew. In 1944 he was murdered by the Nazi-collaborating militia. Soon after France’s liberation Charles de Gaulle put Maurice Thorez, the former French Communist Party leader who’d become the minister for the public service, in charge of implementing Zay’s plan.

Within a decade the énarques were key to a highly-planned postwar economy. By the ’60s there were signs of resentment. For all its egalitarian inspiration, the school had a knack for collecting and promoting cohorts that looked a lot like the same old hereditary leadership class. In France as anywhere else, money buys tutors, quiet study time, and connections that shape your life before the entrance exam even if they don’t play a direct role after. That sense of resentment, of a reform that had entrenched privilege instead of erasing it, deepened over time.

Each graduating class at l’ENA holds a party early on to select a name for their promotion, or graduating class. It’s an emblem of the solidarity that comes from shared stress. The class of 1949 was the Promotion Nations unies, after the United Nations. Later classes named themselves after writers (Tocqueville, Proust) or politicians (de Gaulle, the ’70s West German Chancellor Willy Brandt). Some promotions achieve legendary status. The promotion Voltaire, class of 1980, was legendary: it produced a president, François Hollande; a presidential candidate, Hollande’s longtime partner Ségolène Royal; and a prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.

But then along came Macron, who arrived in 2002 and graduated in 2004. There were already magazine articles about Macron’s class at l’ENA before anyone suspected he would be a presidential candidate. The charming kid from the northern city of Amiens didn’t particularly stand out in a class of rapid climbers who moved into key posts in government and business soon after they graduated in 2004. Here’s the piece in French Vanity Fair from 2014. Twenty members of the class of 2004 were already chiefs of staff or senior advisors to government ministers, it says. Others ran insurance companies or worked at the United Nations. “Their names aren’t known to the general public but they constitute what must be considered a rising power network. And there’s no reason to think they’ll stop there, when it’s all going so well.” Much of the material for my own article, the one you’re reading, comes from Les Jeunes Gens, a book that the Vanity Fair article’s author, Mathieu Larnaudie, published after Macron’s 2017 election.

From their first days at l’ENA, the class of 2004 had a sense of themselves as a unique group, blessed—and tested—by their good fortune. Things were happening.

On April 21, 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen had been one of two winners in the first round of the country’s presidential election. He soon lost big to Jacques Chirac in the run-off, but the unprecedented breakthrough by a far-right populist seemed an unprecedented challenge to France’s Republican values. This was also the first class at l’ENA after Chirac abolished compulsory military service for young French men. A double cohort, comprising returning conscripts and men who’d never have to serve, swelled the class’s ranks (134 French students aiming for choice spots in the civil service, plus 51 international students) and made it more lopsidedly male than usual.

Finally, on Valentine’s Day 2003, France’s foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin (ENA 1980, promotion Voltaire) gave his speech at the United Nations opposing the Bush administration’s plans for war in Iraq. Here was France carving its own path, standing against the tide, putting Anglo-Saxon noses out of joint.

All these events seemed to pose questions to the young classmates: what’s France for in the world? What’s the nature of public service? Who owes what to whom in this world? The questions were all the more pressing because, looking around, it was pretty obvious to the bright young kids that many of them were born lucky and that the hard work had come later. One was the grandson of a legendary cabinet minister. Most came from prominent families. Their school was France’s highest-pressure meritocracy, but it wasn’t only that.

The class gave a hint that it might have a rebel streak when it came time to name itself. On a long, boozy night, a few surprising names for the promotion were proposed. One was “Les Héritiers,” after a 1964 book that described how France’s higher education system reinforced privilege instead of  opportunity. The group finally decided their class would be known forever as the promotion Léopold Sedar Senghor, after a Senegalese poet who, educated in Paris and elected to the prestigious Académie Française, became Senegal’s first democratically elected president.

But that gesture was nothing compared to the coup de théâtre the class of 2004 pulled off on the last day of school. Here was the moment when students would learn how they scored on the exams and the top 20 would have their pick of civil-service jobs. The highest-scoring student in the class—the major, in the lingo—was Marguerite Bérard, daughter of an énarque and another énarque, living with a classmate she would later marry, on her way to jobs as senior advisor to Sarkozy and then as a bank president. She accepted a handshake from the director of l’ENA and then handed him a 20-page manifesto, ENA: The Urgent Need for Reform, signed by 132 of the class’s 134 students. Emmanuel Macron, 6th in his class, was one of the signatories.

The surprise was complete. The school’s leadership was humiliated. The students all received letters from a French cabinet minister berating them for their cheek. They also received the jobs they wanted and the future the ENA had been built to deliver. But 17 years later, the most relentless and seductive and unstoppable member of the promotion Senghor is implementing the reform they called for on the day when it seemed they really could write their own future.

Will it make a difference? It’s hard to say. Macron has already announced that ENA will be replaced with a new Institute for Public Service, with more entry paths than the single round of brutal exams, but with the same exit ranking as the old school. Instead of going to central coordinating agencies of government, the new school’s top grads will have to get out into the country and work in departments that actually deliver services to citizens. My hunch is that to the great majority of French citizens, it’ll be a distinction without a difference: a factory for producing a leadership class that, after it finishes its stint on the ground, will go on to run everything else.

The option of replacing ENA with nothing—leaving France without a dominant dedicated public-service school, an absence that would make it more like Canada and a lot of other countries—seems not to have occurred to Macron. Old habits die hard, even in people who think they’re dedicated to change. I do hope Macron, or some other politician who shares a certain idea of France, beats the latest Le Pen next year. For all its quirks, indeed in most cases because of them, it’s still a great country.

Source: Emmanuel Macron, l’ENA, and the old weird France

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

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