Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 537

US Policy to Ukraine in Need of Urgent Fix

U.S. policy toward Ukraine is in urgent need of an overhaul, and President Obama himself needs to lead the charge. The front-page story in Tuesday’s Washington Post that the non-lethal assistance the United States has been providing to Ukraine is outdated and falling apart underscored that there is no time to waste in fixing some serious problems. Three such problems can and should be fixed quickly.

Let’s start with the Post report. According to reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “The United States has delivered more than $260 million in non-lethal military equipment to help the government of Ukraine in its fight against a Russian-backed insurgency, but some of the U.S.-supplied gear meant to protect and transport Ukrainian military forces is little more than junk.” Gibbons-Neff cited, for example, Humvees that are nearly thirty years old.Providing such equipment has been a blow to Ukrainians’ morale and America’s standing in Ukraine. “If the Americans are going to send us equipment, don’t send us secondhand stuff,” Gibbons-Neff quotes one Ukrainian special forces commander. The Pentagon should be able to find equipment and materiel that is more modern and in good shape. This problem should be easy to address.The second problem—providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine to help it fend off Vladimir Putin’s aggression— is harder, because it would require the President to reverse himself. Congress has passed several pieces of legislation by large bipartisan majorities calling for the provision of lethal arms to Ukraine, and virtually every member of the Cabinet as well as his Vice President support such a step; President Obama is the lone holdout. President Petro Poroshenko and other senior Ukrainian officials have requested shoulder-mounted Javelin anti-tank missiles and other systems to help thwart further Russian advances into Ukrainian territory. Obama has explained his opposition to their requests by warning that such a move would trigger escalation by Russia. A more likely result would be that Putin would think twice before launching further into Ukraine in the face of a Ukrainian fighting force that has been beefed up by American anti-tank weapons.It’s worth recalling the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine agreed to surrender the nuclear weapons it inherited from the collapse of the USSR in exchange for a pledge from the other signatories—Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—that they would uphold and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. While not a formal treaty, the Budapest Memorandum played a key role in reducing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction because Ukraine lived up to its end of the deal. Russia, by contrast, has not by invading its neighbor and annexing Crimea. We should live up to our end of the deal by complying with the Ukrainian pleas for defensive weapons; they are not asking for U.S. troops on the ground but the means by which to defend themselves.The third problem is the fact that Obama has not set foot in Ukraine once since becoming President, though he did travel there once while he was in the Senate. The biggest challenge in Europe in decades has been Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, a country of 45 million people. In recognition of that, most Western leaders have visited Kyiv at least once to show Ukrainians their support. Could Obama not have tacked on a quick visit while in Europe, for example after his recent trip to Paris?Next week, Vice President Biden will be making his fifth visit to Ukraine, but his engagement, while laudable, is no substitute for much-needed engagement by his boss. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, President Obama has met with Putin more times than he has with Poroshenko, despite asserting in January in his State of the Union speech that he is leading efforts to isolate Russia. An Obama visit to Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity with the Ukrainian people would be a huge boost to Ukraine—there is, after all, nothing like Air Force One landing in one’s country and all that comes with it.The Obama Administration deserves credit for the sanctions it has imposed against the Putin regime, though more should be done to preempt, not react to, Putin’s aggression. The Administration has rightly pressed Ukrainian leaders to get serious about fighting corruption, and it has provided several billion dollars in assistance through loans, though it could do more (and the Europeans should be doing much more). We should also provide much more humanitarian assistance for those Ukrainians displaced and affected by Russia’s invasion.The problems identified above are serious and badly hurting the U.S. image in Ukraine. They also send the wrong signal to Putin: that we are not paying sufficient attention to Ukraine at a time when it needs us more than ever. The President should order his team to properly equip Ukraine and reverse his own objections to providing lethal assistance. It would be best if he announced such corrections in policy in person in Kyiv.

India Decries the West’s “Carbon Imperialism”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry labeled India the biggest “challenge” in the way of negotiators trying to hammer out a Global Climate Treaty (GCT) in Paris, and predictably his comments didn’t go over well in the south Asian nation. The Telegraph reports:

…Mr Kerry’s “challenge” comment was received with fury in New Delhi. Officials here are quick to point out that it still burns less coal than the US or China – and besides, the West has been profiting from pumping out carbon for decades.

“Kerry’s comment is unwarranted and unfair. The attitude of some of the developed countries is the challenge for the Paris conclusion,” said Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister. India is “not in the habit of taking any pressure from anybody”, he added.“This smacks of a ‘carbon imperialism’,” wrote Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government’s chief economic advisor. “And such imperialism on the part of advanced nations could spell disaster for India and other developing countries.”

Both sides have a point here, and that fact alone illustrates why this quest for a GCT borders on the quixotic. India is the world’s most populous country, and its 1.3 billion people won’t be keen on seeing development delayed for less tangible progress on mitigating climate change. For a country which has already struggled with massive blackouts, cheap and available energy is the name of the game, and that presents a problem for Paris delegates, because coal is as dirty and high-emitting as it inexpensive.

But from New Delhi’s perspective, there’s a deep undercurrent of hypocrisy beneath the lofty rhetoric coming out of the conference in France. After all, the developed world is responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions to date, a product of 20th century industrialization. For the world’s poorer countries, it’s hard to countenance the fact that they’re being told that that similar development path is no longer available.India hasn’t shied away from insisting on its right to grow this year, staking out a clear position ahead of the ongoing Paris summit. The West hoped to buy off the developing world with the creation of a Global Climate Fund at the failed 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, but so far hasn’t followed up on its commitments to actually put up the agreed upon annual $100 billion.Without monetary assurances, there’s no hope in convincing developing countries to curtail growth for the greater good, and going by the American example the money doesn’t seem to be in the offing. That’s what negotiators are tackling right now in Paris, and that’s why they won’t produce a robust deal.

On Sexual Assault, Is Presumption of Guilt Going Mainstream?

The former First Lady received an unexpected—and no doubt unwelcome—question on the campaign trail today. The Free Beacon reports:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was asked Thursday in New Hampshire whether the alleged sexual abuse or harassment victims of her husband should be believed, given her recent tweet on the matter.

“You recently came out to say that all rape victims should be believed? But would you say that about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones? Should we believe them as well?” the audience member asked.“Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence,” Clinton said, drawing applause.

Of course, the term “be believed” is ambiguous—believed by whom, and in what context, and to what effect? If Clinton simply means that those who say they have been assaulted deserve a respectful and serious hearing, or that they should be supported by friends, that’s of course correct. But, in the context of her other remarks on this issue, Clinton may implicitly be endorsing the work of the controversial campus tribunals, which all too often require accused students to prove their innocence in violation of the fundamental principles of due process.

For our part, we believe that “innocent until proven guilty” has served American society well for hundreds of years, and bad things tend to happen when it is tossed aside. Protecting civil liberties doesn’t mean suppressing alleged victims—it just means that the authorities must take accusations seriously, conduct a thorough investigation, and, yes, prove that someone is guilty of wrongdoing before meting out official sanctions (or before others push social sanctions and shaming).This story is a reminder of the power of campus politics to reshape the mainstream discourse. The notion that people who make an accusation of sexual assault “must be believed,” has spread from campuses to the media (remember the Rolling Stone debacle) to the highest levels of American politics. It’s important to take the kinds of ideas being floated by campus activists seriously—no matter how outlandish they might initially seem.

Fire and Brimstone

British warplanes today launched air strikes on the al-Omar oilfield near the city of Deir Ezzor, thereby extending Britain’s contribution to the war against ISIS from Iraq to Syria. Four RAF Tornado bombers backed up by a Reaper drone attacked six ISIS targets using Paveway IV bombs before returning to their airbase in Cyprus. The strikes on one of the most important ISIS money-spinning operations came just hours after a dramatic day in the House of Commons. British lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to support Prime Minister David Cameron’s ISIS strategy, but the parliamentary debate left the opposition Labour party in disarray after 67 of its MPs, including foreign affairs spokesperson Hilary Benn, defied their leader Jeremy Corbyn by voting with the government.

In the overall context of the war against ISIS–both the chaos on the ground and the uncertain overall western strategy–it would be easy to dismiss the British move as small beer. UK forces are already deployed in the region; this latest move only extends the range of their activities. No ground troops will be deployed; only up to ten Tornado GR4 attack aircraft, six Typhoon FGR4 combat aircraft and ten Reaper MQ9A unmanned drones will participate in operations.As military responses go, it’s no game changer. Nevertheless, the shift in British strategy is important, not least for these three reasons.First, the RAF contribution in Syria may be limited, but it gives the Western allies a highly significant additional military option. What the British have, and the Americans want, is the laser-guided Brimstone air-to-ground missile. Tornados can fire these ultra-accurate missiles from 20,000 ft, hitting targets travelling at 70 mph. That gives the allies a new capability to target the ISIS leadership directly, aiming to “cut off the snake’s head.” The beauty of the Brimstone is its accuracy. By using a small warhead and an adjustable, pilot-controlled fuse, the weapon dramatically reduces the chances of civilian casualties. The UK Ministry of Defence says that of the around 340 air strikes carried out in similar circumstances in Iraq since last September as part of Operation Shader, civilian casualties have been zero.Wednesday night’s vote in the House of Commons is also significant because, second, it draws a line under British policy after the War on Terror. The House of Commons vote in 2003 for the war in Iraq was one of the most controversial in parliament’s recent history. The scars that decision left on the British body politic were profound. Bitter memories of corrupted intelligence and the “dodgy dossier,” not to mention the human cost of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, left Britain battle-weary and sceptical. Wednesday’s vote does not represent closure on that earlier decision, but it does at least show that parliamentary approval can be sought and won for military action where the outcomes, as in 2003, are unclear and public doubts remain.David Cameron, prime minister since 2010, has been careful not to run too far ahead of public opinion on questions of war and peace. Yet in doing so, he has stood accused of diminishing British prestige abroad; of reacting to events rather than, in Churchill’s phrase, “making the weather.” That’s the third reason why this week’s vote is important: it marks a shift to a more traditional approach in British foreign policy. That does not mean a slavish devotion to the “special relationship.” In fact one of the more amusing aspects of recent Transatlantic dialogues has been watching American officials and commentators huff and puff about Britain’s growing relationship with China. This from a country whose signature policy since 2009 has been the “pivot to Asia.” You asked for it; you got it.Britain will now begin to play a larger role in the Western alliance, interestingly as part of a developing axis with President Hollande of France. Indeed, it was the statesmanship of the French president, rather than the American one, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that did so much to convince the British Prime Minister to extend Britain’s military response to ISIS.That direct move also coincided with a general shift in policy in the last six months towards something more expansive. In particular, George Osborne, the influential Chancellor of the Exchequer and effective Deputy Prime Minister, is said to have been frustrated by the limits that coalition government placed on the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015. He has been pushing for a more assertive approach since the party formed a majority administration in May. This week we saw what that bolder policy might look like.The new approach is not a return to the neoliberalism of Tony Blair, whose belief in the power of governments to spread of democracy pre-dated even George Bush and the war on terror. Instead, the actions of this week look more like those of another dominant figure of the postwar era, the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In foreign policy, she was often a pragmatic, even cautious figure, who recognized that war was not to be taken lightly. But she balanced that pragmaticism with a revulsion of appeasement and acceptance of risk when she believed Britain was right. As she pointed out in a House of Commons debate in 1986 about the bombing of Libya, “If one refuses to take any risks because of the consequences, the terrorist Governments will win and one can only cringe before them.”This week Britain decided not to cringe.

New Biofuel Quotas Already Raising Costs

America’s biofuel boondoggle isn’t just farcical—it’s expensive, and those costs are inevitably passed along to drivers who end up paying more at the pump. This week the EPA released next year’s quotas for the amount of ethanol U.S. refineries will be required to blend into fuel, and the 11 percent jump in required volumes promises to spike compliance costs and be reflected eventually in prices. Moreover, as Reuters reports, next year’s level looks to be higher than what refiners can safely utilize:

The EPA’s 2016 requirement would likely push the amount of ethanol in fuel over 10 percent – a “blend wall” that oil companies argue is a maximum before costly changes are needed to pumps and other infrastructure, as well as vehicles.

This blend wall is important: Many car engines on the road today could suffer damage if fueled by gasoline that’s more than 10 percent ethanol by volume. That sets a limit on the amount of ethanol refiners can use without danger, and so to satisfy federal mandates companies are forced to snatch up credits called RINs—Renewable Identification Numbers. As a result, demand for these RINs is spiking, raising costs for refiners. Reuters has more:

RIN prices have soared since the EPA said on Monday fuel companies will have to use 18.1 billion gallons of renewables next year, up from a May proposal, though not as high as Congress mandated in a 2007 law. Average RINs costs had already been higher this year than last amid regulatory delays and worries over supplies. That coincided with higher costs for refiners to comply with targets, according to industry sources and a Reuters analysis.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen upswings in the RIN market hit the oil industry, and so long as refiners are forced to obey government mandates above what they can reasonably comply with, it won’t be the last. Keep in mind that as companies struggle to meet these mandates and drivers get gouged at the pump, this whole boondoggle is raising global food prices without actually accomplishing any of its purported green aims.

Working Class Boys Struggling Across the Anglosphere

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the popular framing of the relationship between gender and educational advantage in the West—that boys get special privileges while girls are discriminated against—is no longer particularly accurate or useful. The latest case in point: Working class male students in the UK face worse educational outcomes than their sisters, according to a new Oxford University study. Pam Sammons, the lead author, summarized her findings in Conversation UK:

We know that children from less affluent homes are much less likely to get good GCSE and A-level results, access the most selective universities and secure leading jobs. But we know less about the impact that other factors – such as their gender, ethnicity or where they live – have on a pupil’s academic outcome.

Our research, published by the Sutton Trust charity, found that some young people experience a “double disadvantage”. Being a boy and poor, especially being a boy of white UK background, much diminishes the likelihood of going on to advanced level studies. Growing up in a poor neighbourhood also has a negative impact on long-term outcomes up to age 18. […]Our study shows that the adverse impact of family disadvantage was also particularly evident for boys. Disadvantaged boys were less likely to go on to advanced level studies than disadvantaged girls, with just 40% of them carrying on an academic route compared with 55% of their girl peers.

Researchers have observed similar patterns in the United States. MIT’s David Autor recently published a widely publicized study on outcomes for American boys and girls, which concluded (in the New York Times‘s words) that “any disadvantage, like growing up in poverty, in a bad neighborhood or without a father, takes more of a toll on boys than on their sisters.”

This doesn’t mean that boys are “oppressed” as a class. Males really do retain certain systematic advantages—just look at the composition of the U.S. Congress, or the Forbes wealthiest people list. But it does show that constructing rigid hierarchies of privilege—in which being male is always an advantage, and never poses its own set of challenges—is probably not the best way to understand the challenges facing students in the Anglosphere.

Alone in the World

Harvard art historian Jennifer L. Roberts gives her students what looks like, at first glance, an excruciating, perhaps even cruel assignment. She has her students sit with a single painting, sans gadgets and gabbing, for three full hours. Why this? Says Roberts:

It is commonly assumed that vision is immediate. It seems direct, uncomplicated, and instantaneous—which is why it has arguably become the master sense for the delivery of information in the contemporary technological world. But what students learn in a visceral way in this assignment is that in any work of art there are details and orders and relationships that take time to perceive.

There’s a lesson in this for our current war against ISIS. It’s obvious that we finally and properly will have to get after the barbarians wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq. The horror of the ongoing civil war, the refugee flows pouring into Europe, the monstrous attacks in Paris, the dangerous brinksmanship between a Russian despot and an uncomfortably authoritarian NATO member, all concentrate the mind. President Obama may desperately cling to his so-called strategy of “leading from behind”—by now a cynical euphemism for not wanting to bear any burden—but this cannot go on. Sooner or later, America will be in this fight.

But what of the bigger picture? Leaving aside for a moment the hardly trifling matter that we still lack any coherent vision and strategy for the region as a whole. Never mind that Libya, Yemen, and Iraq are failed states; that Saudi Arabia is not pre-ordained to remain stable, and indeed, that its stalemated war in Yemen may yet prove its ultimate undoing; and that Iran, with or without nuclear weapons, will carry on with its hegemonic ambitions, unnerving its neighbors and triggering bloody sectarian conflicts wherever it meddles. No, America and its closest allies have another urgent matter to consider. What happens if we defeat ISIS and stabilize Syria, and by the time we’re done Europe and NATO have fallen apart? In a sentence: how do we deal with the rest, if there’s nothing left of the West?The EU is coming unglued. The recent Greek bailout divided Europe and was wildly unpopular in Germany. Angela Merkel got her way and the EU will shovel new buckets of (mostly) German money south. But the Chancellor was opposed by her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, one of the country’s most respected politicians, who may still get the last word in the matter. Everyone knows that this was not the last Greek bailout. As a fed up friend of mine in Berlin puts it, “This is pure Alice in Wonderland fantasy, where we keep giving the Greeks money, they promise to reform their economy, while we know they will not reform.” Many Germans now fear that Portugal might become the next Greece. After a few weeks of political instability, Europe’s most fragile economy after Greece is now being led by a leftist alliance bitterly opposed to austerity measures demanded by both Brussels and Berlin.Then there’s the migration crisis, a serious challenge before, and now post-Paris attacks, arguably a graver matter still. By January, Germany alone will have taken in, by some estimates, as many as 1.5 million Muslim refugees. How will they be absorbed? A very large number are young men, many believed to be uneducated; some 20 percent are thought to be illiterate. If officials were to be honest—but no one dares tell the German public the truth—it’s hard to know much about who these refugees actually are. Never mind the deep and meticulous vetting necessary to ascertain who’s a security risk. The Germans are having trouble at the moment finding enough interpreters simply to keep up with basic processing of the new arrivals. Though flows have started to abate a bit as Europe’s winter weather sets in, at the height of the influx in October, they poured in at a rate of 8,000 to 10,000 a day.Germany will hold three important state elections in March. The results will tell us a lot about the mood in the country and fortunes for Angela Merkel’s political future. At the moment, though, goodwill and generosity are already giving way to anxiety and anger. Gabor Steingart, publisher of the leading German business and finance daily Handelsblatt, contended recently that a tone-deaf Mrs. Merkel was fast on her way from being leader of Germany to “the Chancellor of the refugees.” Merkel’s part-time ally, part-time nemesis Schäuble, who once served as his country’s interior minister, has floated the idea of deploying the federal army inside the country, so unwieldy does the refugee problem threaten to become. “Schäuble’s target,” opines the Handelsblatt’s Steingart, is not so much security and the “terrorists, but voters vulnerable to being seduced by the far right.”And you can count on this: right-wing populism will grow across Europe. (Look no further than Hungary to see how this gets its start. And keep an eye on France’s regional elections, where the Front National is projected to win big next week.) Schengen, the EU’s free-movement-zone, which is now looking more precarious with each passing day, will prove very hard to put back together if it definitively shatters. Public spending for a number of EU states will balloon, in large part due to the costs of handling the refugee flows, but also due to heightened costs of maintaining security. The French have already made noises about breaching the spending limits imposed by the European Stability Pact in the wake of the Paris massacre. If France gets its way, other countries are likely to follow suit, (in turn driving the Germans crazy). Beholding this unholy mess, the UK’s voters will be more likely than ever to vote to exit the EU when their referendum is finally called in late 2016 or early 2017. And if Britain leaves, look for others, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, to start eyeing the exits.What’s needed now is agile, imaginative thinking, deft acrobatics, and a good dose of luck—in the guise of no new terror attacks—if Europe is to find its way to a soft landing the next couple years. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a multi-speed European project, with concentric circles of countries choosing their levels of integration a la carte. But we should never discount the possibility of even a total breakup of the EU.Make no mistake, the NATO alliance is equally rickety and vulnerable. Take the southern flank. Of Greece, Turkey, Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, and soon enough Montenegro, how many will be democracies in 5 years? Which will be pro-American, and which will have drifted into Russia’s orbit? Turkey’s shooting down of the Russian bomber, though fully justified and deserving of full NATO backing—especially given serial Russian territorial provocations elsewhere around the globe—has already prompted President Obama to try to frame the incident as an something to be worked out bilaterally between Ankara and Moscow. France, for its part, has opted to prosecute its new war on terror outside of NATO, without our strategically oblivious White House noticing enough to care. And in the north, where the Baltic states and Poland (as well as non-NATO members Sweden and Finland) find themselves once again threatened by Russia, U.S. reticence is driving many in the region to despondency.Meanwhile, remember all the hopes we once pinned on “New Europe” as a key to a revitalized Atlantic Alliance? Hungary has been confused over which side to take in Ukraine’s conflict with Russia. The Czech Republic’s President made the U.S. Ambassador persona non grata in Prague Palace after the American envoy made noises over Prague’s obsequiousness toward the Kremlin. The Slovaks have opposed sanctions against Russia. As for Russia itself: count on Vladimir Putin to bully, bribe, and blackmail the alliance into a thousand little pieces. He’s been at it for several years now with no real, appreciable price to pay. He may not be able to defeat the alliance on the battlefield, but he is more than capable of destroying it politically.Unlike with the EU, where the crisis is polyvalent, there is an answer to NATO’s troubles. It’s called American leadership. Bismarck once said that every alliance has its horse and its rider. It’s the United States that must lead, especially at a time when Europe shows signs of faltering. But getting back to a strong, healthy, well functioning alliance will be no easy feat. While we must keep doing everything we can to get the attention of our sleep walking administration—the next 13 months are fraught with danger—we need to look ahead and consider just how we’ll begin to repair all the damage.Here are some recommendations:First, resist the temptation to hyper-correct. A new President will be tempted to demonstrate that he/she is not Barack Obama. As much as there will be to do and a sense that time is of the essence, it will be important to establish priorities and sequence our moves.Nothing will be more important than containing Vladimir Putin’s Russia. We don’t need him to defeat ISIS—the U.S., our European allies, and our Arab and Gulf partners have more than enough military power to get the job done. Putin’s strategic aims should be crystal clear by now, and they are implacably hostile to our own. On the continent, he wants to divide Europe, weaken the EU and render NATO irrelevant. In the Middle East, he wants a client state in Syria and, sharing the same goal with Iran, wants to push America out of the Middle East. Putting a lid on Putin doesn’t solve any of our myriad problems, per se. But managing these difficult issues becomes infinitely easier with his malign hands no longer meddling.Second, grasp that most of Europe is not waiting to be rescued by America. A good number hold us responsible for the current Middle East mess: George W. Bush for getting us into Iraq, and the Obama Administration for pulling us out prematurely. America needs to lead again, to be sure, but not—Europeans will want to hear—because we think we have all the answers. Rather, we need to bring to the table a sense that the West is now in danger of irreversible decline, and that we’re all in this together. With clarity of purpose and all the finesse and savvy we can muster, it will fall to us to steer the transatlantic alliance back to cohesion and positions of resolve.As for Europe’s own growing internal turmoil, let’s listen first, and be sure we do no harm. We could take a page from Margaret Thatcher who told Ronald Reagan when he was first elected, “Your problems are ours.”Finally, in the Middle East, understand that ISIS and Syria are “the thundering present,” as President Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson described such moments. It’s an immediate threat that can rip the West apart, and thus must be confronted together. But then, too, if we lose sight of the bigger picture, and of our larger aims and most important alliance, this may be something we end up doing in large measure by ourselves.

Another Way the Ivy League Perpetuates Inequality

We’ve written before that “America’s top universities, for all their rhetoric about equality, diversity, and social justice, actually do far more to perpetuate and sustain the upper class than they do to promote those values.” Schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton “rack up billions in tax-exempt donations, connect their disproportionately wealthy students to lucrative job opportunities, and foster exclusive social networks of the rich and powerful.”

A new study out of UC San Diego highlights one of the ways this process works. According to the authors, elite universities facilitate the Ivy League-Wall Street nexus by actively shepherding students into fields of finance and consulting by giving these firms preferential access to their students. CBS News‘ Lynn O’Shaughnessy reports:

In great numbers, students who attend Ivy League institutions end up pursuing jobs that are in the highly lucrative fields of management consulting, finance and technology.

But do students want to attend a school like Harvard just because they aspire to work for firms like Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital, or is something else at play?

In seeking answers, Amy Binder, a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and her collaborators, sought to find out what was behind the stampede at elite universities into the lucrative fields of financial services, consulting and technology. Binder discovered that a huge driving force behind the embrace of these highly compensated careers was the behavior of the universities themselves. By their actions, these schools set these lucrative occupations apart and allowed recruiters greater access to the students that most other occupations didn’t enjoy. […]

The researchers discovered that most students were not focused on pursuing jobs in investment banking and consulting before arriving on their campuses. In fact, most had no idea what these jobs were … A major reason students became excited about these fields is because the schools essentially gave great access to companies in these fields at the expense of other ones.

Of course, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with these fields, and students at elite colleges would likely be drawn to them for their high salaries even if they weren’t favored in the campus career-sorting process (especially seeing as graduates are beset with increasingly large student debts). Moreover, this is a single study—and the dynamics here are surely complicated. But by giving Goldman Sachs and Bain special access to their students, elite schools make it easier for those firms to ignore talented students from non-elite colleges, and limit the opportunities for more civically minded organizations to recruit Ivy League talent. They also facilitate the formation of a segregated class of high-status people who all work at the same firms, live in the same places, and share the same social and political views.

Ivy League administrators are currently appeasing campus social justice activists by constructing new racial identity centers and mandating more diversity training for their faculty. They could do far more to advance the cause of equality and justice by loosening their incestuous relationship with high-end recruiters, and making the job application process more fair for students who don’t have the privilege of attending a top school.

EU Appears Set to Extend Russian Sanctions

EU officials have confirmed that Russian sanctions will be extended for another six months. Handelsblatt:

E.U. countries from eastern Europe, traditionally critical of Russia, wanted to extend the sanctions by a full year while southern European countries argued for an extension of just three or four months. Six months was the compromise, sources in Brussels said.

Publicly, Russia is taking sanctions in stride. In remarks yesterday, Vladimir Putin remained unbowed and warned that Russia must prepare itself for longer sanctions and sustained low commodity prices. Meanwhile, John Kerry was at NATO headquarters yesterday, where he had a clear message for Russia. Reuters reports:

 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to act: “If Moscow wants relief from sanctions … it is there for the getting.”

“Implement Minsk and this can be achieved,” he told a separate news conference following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers who discussed the Ukraine crisis.

Between the U.S. and Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, is the rest of Europe: Germany and southern Europe aren’t thrilled with sanctions. Many companies had been pushing for them to be lifted, although those businesses seemed to have quieted down for now. If some in Europe had their way, the six-month extension compromise would be the last one Washington and eastern European countries would secure. And yet circumstances are conspiring to make it difficult for those opposed to sanctions to press their case. Escalating tensions between Crimea, Moscow, and Kiev over electricity and gas supplies suggest that any semblance of peace is far off in Ukraine. That makes it harder for leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel to scale back all sanctions.

Biafra May Be Staging a Comeback

Dissatisfied with Nigeria’s messy governance and the recent election of a Muslim president from the country’s north, the Igbo people are starting to talk again about reviving Biafra, the secessionist state that was repressed in a brutal civil war in the late 60s. The Economist reports:

Secessionist organisations in Biafra have been agitating for years, but analysts reckon the scale of the current marches is unprecedented. Superficially, they were sparked by the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, the outspoken head of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, and director of Radio Biafra, a pirate station.[..]

In the presidential election in March most south-easterners voted for the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, who comes from their region. He lost to Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north. “#NigeriaWillRot”, Mr Kanu’s radio station declared after the results were announced. Politicians have fired up impressionable agitators by claiming that the new government is marginalising Igbos, says Nnamdi Obasi of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank […]So far the demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, though locals say shops have been looted and tyres set ablaze, and protesters claim police have killed several of their crew (the police deny those charges). That could change if Mr Kanu is killed or mistreated by Nigerian security agents. Boko Haram sets an unhappy precedent. The Islamist movement became a full-scale insurgency only after its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was shot in police detention in 2009. Another worry is the impending end of a six-year-old amnesty for militants from the Delta. They could return to violence if it is not extended next month, spelling wider instability in the region.

In Europe, nobody would doubt that Biafrans constitute a nation and have the right to a state. The Igbo population, at 32 million, is larger than 22 members of the EU. In Africa, they’ve been told they are a tribe, and in 1970 the world stood by as they were starved into surrender.

Yet even today, the thought of encouraging Biafran independence gives Africa policy wonks the hives: If one big tribe goes for independence, how many others will follow? Africa will be drenched in blood as the different ethnic groups sort themselves out. There are good reasons for worrying about this. The history of Europe from 1850 to 1950, the history of what was once Yugoslavia, the remnants of Iraq and Syria today: These all show how identity wars can plunge whole regions into terrible conflict. Moreover, the bloodshed in South Sudan shows that the dangers of breaking up African states aren’t imaginary. Partitioning Sudan did not end the bloodshed.None of that, however, means very much to Igbos who want independence from the dysfunctional and corrupt ramshackle entity that calls itself the state of Nigeria. And this points to another problem. We all sing hymns to the wonders of diversity and to the value of cosmopolitan society these days, but multi-ethnic federations are often not very well run. That was true of the Ottoman, Russian, and Hapsburg empires in 19th-century Europe and the Middle East. Nationalist movements inside those empires thought—in many cases correctly—that a smaller state, built on the culture and language of a single ethnic group, could get better results. Belgium, torn between Flemings and Walloons, is badly governed in large part because the ethnic tensions distort politics and force dysfunctional compromises as the cost of holding the country together.Nigeria and many African countries suffer from this problem. Unlike the Belgians, who on the whole are rich enough to put up with a weak and ineffective state, Nigerians and others in Africa desperately need good governance in order to achieve basic prosperity and order.African states aren’t the only countries in which ethnic and religious groups are uneasily held together in a poorly functioning structure, and Africa isn’t the only place where inter-ethnic or inter-faith hostility has burst or will burst into war. Unfortunately, the problems seem to get worse with economic and social development. People care more about how they are governed and about their national or sectarian identities as they become more affluent and better read. Put all that together, and we are living in precarious times indeed.