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My community, my thinking and I

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

Many people have told me that, in many ways, I am the antithesis of what my upbringing and my circumstances should have produced. They stare in amazement when I tell them about my background and my schooling experiences, wondering how I ever came to be who I am. It is clear to me, however, that I have been shaped extensively by my upbringing in Asia.

I grew up in Singapore, a multi-ethnic tropical nation-state that, within one generation, went from rural village to bustling metropolis. As a result, Singapore is a study in juxtaposition: the ancient with the avant-garde, the traditional with the trendy. Consequently, I have always had a great love for the very old, archaic roots of culture — traditional language, music, architecture and even vintage clothing. To me, such things speak of a rich history and a precious heritage. Hence, it has given me great joy to travel to places bearing such reminders of the past, such as the ruins of Carthage in Tunisia, Ephesus in Turkey, the Forbidden City in China, and the Alhambra in Spain. On the other hand, I have always been one to embrace the new and the modern; for example, I took instantly to the Internet and taught myself HTML. As such, I have developed a delicate internal balancing act, accepting the latest developments and integrating the newest technology into my life, while respecting and preserving the roots that ground my identity.

People are sometimes surprised that I have any identity at all. This is due to the fact that most of my schooling years were spent in Confucian, Chinese-style schools which, for the most part, scorn independent thought, creativity and individualism. Instead, they espouse a style of spoon-fed rote learning and champion the inculcation of Asian values and solidarity.

It is true that most Asian societies are inclined to repress individualism for the sake of societal homogeneity and harmony, which is potentially beneficial when practised in moderation. However, my high school, Dunman High School, took this principle to extremes. The most notoriously Draconian and Maoist Chinese school in Singapore, Dunman High had to be experienced to be believed. Prefects, mostly Chinese nationals, wore red armbands, a la the Red Guards, students were called to morning assembly by the haunting, whistled melody of “Bridge Over the River Kwai”, and every regulation was strictly enforced, down to the color and style of female undergarments. It is surprising, then, that Dunman was consistently the top-ranked co-ed school in the country, with the most expensive campus and lots of extra government funding for computers and other equipment.

Despite the strongly Chinese environment at Dunman (or perhaps because of it), I continued to read English books voraciously, having never been strongly inclined to reading Mandarin books. Thus, even as I was immersed in the most traditional of ethnic Chinese culture, my English actually improved, something I put to full use at Dunman. I participated actively in English drama and eventually became head of the English Drama Society, I put together a debating team that consistently won school titles, and I took to the stage for oratorical competitions.

I am happy to say that I survived four years at Dunman, even flourishing there. Perhaps it was my adaptable spirit. Perhaps it was my optimism. Perhaps it was a guardian angel, who knows? One thing is for sure – Dunman formed my respect for teachers, my sense of propriety and my ability to see the value of discipline.

Come junior year, I chose to enter Raffles Junior College, the most diametrically-opposed school to Dunman there is. Raffles is a Western-styled, multi-ethnic school that strongly encourages independent thought and learning. I loved it. In no time, I was fully integrated into the school, managing to hold my own in the classroom and in the debating arena, where I was part of the team that won a national title. I even found myself on the international stage due to competitions such as ThinkQuest.

No one ever guessed that I was an ex-Dunmanian. While making the most of the cultural heritage I have been exposed to, I have also managed to forge my own path. Grounded in my culture, I look forward to blazing that path well into the future

Jason S. Yeo, Oct 2000

 

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Liberalism v. Hegemonic Stability Theory: A Constructivist Rejection of Hegemony

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

Jason Yeo
Historical Study A-12, Paper 2
Due March 17, 2005TF: Gregg Peeples

Q2: Bruce Russett and John Oneal treat Liberalism and Hegemony as alternative or competing explanations of order in international politics.  Hence, they assert that there is little evidence that hegemony has been associated with peace, and abundant evidence that the three pillars of liberalism have been so associated (see pages 184-191).

Critically evaluate this treatment.  First, draw on historical material (especially 20th century material) and develop an explanation of international order that integrates the central insights of the Hegemonic and the Liberal approach to international order.  Second, discuss whether it is more useful to think of these two approaches as competing or complementary.

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Liberalism v. Hegemonic Stability Theory:
A Constructivist Rejection of HegemonyThe ongoing debate between Realists and Liberalists in the arena of political science and international relations has already occupied many volumes.  Today, while few academics would completely reject one theory or the other as worthless, there are those who argue for the virtual exclusion of one or the other as a valid perspective while others are attempting to bridge the gap between the two perspectives by viewing them as mostly complementary.  In a close reading of Russett and Oneal’s characterization of Hegemony and Liberalism as alternative or competing explanations of order in international politics, this paper will briefly highlight some of the analytical weaknesses underlying this conclusion, and at the same time sketch a more conciliatory perspective that incorporates the chief insights of both the Hegemonic and the Liberal approach using 20th century material.  I will then answer the question of whether it is more useful to think of the Hegemonic and Liberal approaches as competing or complementary, concluding that empirical results and constructivist arguments are both in favor of privileging the Liberal approach as the dominant competing perspective, although both approaches contain elements of truth.

At the outset, it is important to review Russett and Oneal’s overarching theory about Liberalism, which subsumes and adds to the Realist perspective, and which gives us a starting point for integrating the two approaches.  For them, it would be a mistake to conceive of Liberalism as a competing way of understanding the world (Russett & Oneal, p.90) in the sense of retroactively replacing power-based Realist theories such as the Hegemonic Stability Theory.  Instead, they posit that the three pillars of Liberalism[1] (vibrant international trade, liberal democracy, membership in Inter-Governmental Organisations, IGOs) serve two functions complementary to a Realist perspective – they offer politicians more and better tools for actively promoting international peace, and they form the basis of a new, more peaceful system within which to conduct international relations, where power is still important as in Realism, perhaps even supremely important for “coercion, persuasion or example” (Russett & Oneal, p.191), but yet different.  The three pillars of Liberalism clearly change the way that national interest and power are conceived of by world leaders, and further, how and when this power is exercised.[2]  As Russett and Oneal note, while Realists tend to focus pessimistically on the factors for conflict that states can do little or nothing to control or influence, like geographic proximity and relative military power[3], Liberalism offers practical, achievable objectives for states seeking sustainable peace, and these objectives in and of themselves tend to have positive outcomes that reinforce each other as well as increase the systemic likelihood of peace (more trade positively correlates with greater national wealth; liberal democracies tend to have better rule of law and institutional protections for civilians; IGOs can help to solve collective security problems and the prisoner’s dilemma problem as related to environmental regulations or dismantling trade barriers). 

Moving from the general to the specifics, while Russett and Oneal present important empirical work in support of Liberalism, they overstep the limits of their statistical methods by claiming that there is little empirical support for the Hegemonic view, which claims that a so-called hegemon is associated with a peaceful international system.  To begin with, the results presented by Russett and Oneal consistently support the theory that a preponderance of power within a dyad significantly reduces the likelihood of armed conflict within that dyad (for example, Russett and Oneal, p.191).  This fact on its own already goes some way towards supporting the pacific effect of a hegemon although it is by no means conclusive (at the very least, dyads containing the hegemon are more likely to be peaceful).  Next, although Russett and Oneal find no systemic effects on armed conflict on dyads not involving the hegemon, their own text reveals some confounding factors.  Russett and Oneal themselves write that examining dyads is not particularly useful for examining the effects of a specific factor upon internal politics such as the effect that the existence of a hegemon might have on each country in the non-hegemon dyad (Russett and Oneal, p.199).  Additionally, just as Russett and Oneal admit that their statistical method is unsuited to accurately analyzing the systemic effects of dense networks of IGOs (Russett and Oneal, p.169-170), so too are the factors examined unsuited to accurately measuring the indirect or systemic effects that an extant hegemon has on a particular dyad not containing the hegemon as they do not account for the magnitude and nature of the hegemon’s influence on either or both states in that dyad.

More revealingly, Russett and Oneal find the definition of a hegemon problematic (Russett and Oneal, p. 185), finally settling upon a relative value to measure the extent to which a country was acting as a hegemon in that period.  This highlights the seemingly trivial fact that Hegemonic theory in its purest form is predicated on certain pre-requisites – there has to be a hegemon for Hegemonic theory to be relevant, the hegemon has to be (as defined) able to influence or control the external actions of all the other states in the system, and (importantly) the hegemon has to be both willing and interested in controlling the external actions of the other states in question.[4]  Hegemonic theory works if these assumptions are true.  Empirically however, there has never been a Great Power whose influence unquestionably covered the whole world.  Far from being something to regret, this offers us an opportunity to test the hegemonic perspective.  It would be interesting to see if hegemonic theory is supported by dyadic-interactions amongst dyads with varying extents to which the two states are within the hegemon’s sphere of influence.[5] As the level to which they are both within the hegemon’s sphere of influence increases, we would predict a lower likelihood of armed conflict if the Hegemonic approach is correct, although this correlation would not serve as conclusive proof.   

Despite the shortcomings of the statistical work done by Russett and Oneal to discredit Hegemonic Stability Theory, we must still question the universal applicability of the Hegemonic approach to international order on the grounds that its latter two assumptions (that a hegemon can, and then should and will affect all other states in the world to maintain order) remain largely unrealistic.  Even the United States, the only superpower today, could not possibly be expected to practically bear the burden of mediating and intervening in every international conflict everywhere in the world.  Practically, the US has historically been least successful when intervening in regions far from its borders (Vietnam, Korea, Somalia), and least likely to intervene in globally isolated states of little strategic or economic importance (Rwanda, Haiti), results which make perfect sense from both Realist (greater distance and no influence on balance of power or security) and Liberal (low economic interdependence and shared membership in IGOs) perspectives.  Of course, the extent to which this critique is useful also depends on the definition of international order.  Our expectations for the hegemon would be much lower if international order is minimally-defined as a lack of general war or war that threatens to escalate into a general war but considerably higher if international order is defined as general peace and stability amongst all nations.  Practically speaking, purely Realist Hegemonic theorists tend to place their hopes on an outcome far short of the higher bar.  That is where we see the benefit of a Liberalist approach supported by Hegemonic power, which sets out as achievable the higher standard, while incidentally, but not unimportantly, promising a host of other societal benefits along the way such as faster development of technology through trade exchanges and greater civil and political freedoms for citizens in democratizing states.

In the end, when trying to decide if it is more “useful” to view the three pillars of Liberalism as competing with or complementary to Hegemonic Stability Theory (which derives directly from a Realist tradition), the yardstick has to be which perspective is more likely to lead to the peace and prosperity that states strive towards.  It then becomes clear, from both empirical and constructivist arguments, that starting from the present, in an age of globalization where there is no significant organized ideological resistance to democracy and capitalism (as opposed to localized opposition from particular authoritarian regimes), that we would be better served to treat them as competing theories and to reject the Hegemonic approach in favor of Liberalism’s three pillars even if Hegemonic theory retains some descriptive, explanative, and predictive value.

A key difference in favor of Liberalism as the dominant perspective over Realism (of which the Hegemonic perspective is a subset) is the more robust prescriptive ability of Liberalism.  Simply put, Liberalism offers a clear roadmap for policy makers in the form of the three pillars, and notes that since each pillar constitutes part of a dense web of positively reinforcing effects encouraging peace and prosperity, it is almost immaterial which pillar is focused on first or first instituted (Russett & Oneal, p.193).  In sharp contrast, Realist theorists such as Mearsheimer tend to be confused over the finer (but critical) details of what arrangements of power actually contribute to widespread peace and stability.[6]  There are real conflicts between the mutually exclusive theories about whether a multi-polar, bipolar or hegemonic system best leads to systemic peace, and almost embarrassingly, the strongest refutations of each theory tend to come from within the Realist camp, casting doubts on the ability of Realism to offer useful prescriptions.  Quite frankly, the easiest way to understand the conflict within the Realist camp is to see that they are all wrong in principle, even as they can each be right in a particular case.  Analogous to theories for predicting stock market movements derived from past date, while the logic that Realists deduce from examining each particular historical case may be compelling and closely supported by historical data, these theories are backwards looking, and ultimately cannot be easily generalized into useful, actionable principles for achieving international order.  Returning to Hegemonic Stability Theory, this critique can be framed as a constructivist argument, where the factors and determination of “power” and “national interest” and “security” by both the leaders of the hegemon and of other states is so subjective, culturally-informed and (on some level) arbitrary, to the point that making accurate predictions of what each state will do based on the Hegemonic perspective becomes difficult.  In contrast, the culture and values fostered by the three pillars of Liberalism push armed conflict to the very bottom of options in the foreign policy toolkit, so much so that it may never even be considered.  From a constructivist standpoint, renaming the British Office of War the Ministry of Defense[7] constitutes more than an exercise in political correctness.  It marks a paradigmatic change that makes armed conflict against other democracies almost unthinkable.

Some may protest against this constructivist rejection of Hegmonic Stability Theory, citing Robert Keohane’s thesis that a hegemon is necessary in order to begin the process of building up the liberal pillars by overcoming the initial barriers (externalities) to building a cooperative international economic regime (by asymmetrically bearing the costs of setting up the regime) and by solving the classic prisoner’s dilemma involved in collective security arrangements (by providing or guaranteeing security).  In response, it is easy to point out that the limited number of historical examples to draw on hardly offers more than circumstantial evidence that hegemony is the only means of achieving the three pillars of Liberalism.[8]  But more importantly, in rejecting Hegemonic Stability Theory, we are not ignoring its explanative power looking backward in time.  Instead, we are looking forward, looking for the perspective that allows us the best hope of predicting and working towards a Kantian perpetual peace.  In rejecting a Hegemonic perspective, we are agreeing with Keohane’s own view that once the pillars of Liberalism have taken root, the hegemon’s role becomes markedly less important in maintaining the system, which of course makes perfect sense from a Liberalist perspective.  Once Liberalist principles are in operation, the hegemon is no longer responsible for single-handedly holding the whole system together, a near-impossibility to begin with, and instead all the interconnected states have a vested interest in maintaining the system, which can be done at much lower costs to each state and is a far more plausible and sustainable arrangement.

Finally, it is worth reiterating Russett and Oneal’s view that even if we accept that there is some Realist formula for peace (based on proximity, bipolarity, hegemony, power transition theory or something else), there is little that thoughtful politicians can be expected to do outside of good fortune to change these factors.  We cannot impose hegemony or create a bipolar world if these do not already exist, and we cannot change the geographic distance between existing powerful countries, nor can we (or should we) prevent the natural rise and decline of states such as China or India.  In short, Realism might arguably have some explanative and predictive power, but leaves little constructive action to be taken.  It is undeniably more useful to reject the Hegemonic approach because it adds little to our understanding, introduces various unnecessary risks (the hegemon could well turn despotic and expansionary), and gives us few options for actively achieving perpetual peace.

 

 References:   

Keohane, Robert O., “A Functional Theory of International Regimes,” “Hegemonic Cooperation in the Postwar Era,” After Hegemony: Collaboration and Discord in the World Political Economy, pp. 85-97, 107-109, 135-150, 187-190

Mearsheimer, John J., “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security, (Vol. 15, No. 1): 5-56

Russett, Bruce; Oneal, John R.,
Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001

   

[1] Russett and Oneal refer to the “Kantian Triangle”, but in this essay the three elements of the Kantian system – International Organizations, Democracy and Economic Interdependence – are referred to as the “three pillars of Liberalism”.
[2] For example, democracy can limit the use of military power because military actions have to pass the test of public approval as the US found out in Vietnam and the Gulf Wars.  Economic interdependence can tip the balance in favor of peaceful outcomes in the national interest due to the possible losses from trade disruptions caused by even the threat of armed conflict.  Taiwan’s traditionally cautious view towards provoking China probably draws largely from its desire to remain attractive to foreign direct investment.
[3] Russett and Oneal’s statistical analysis consistently confirm that traditional Realist factors such as geographic proximity (dyads with a shared border are more likely to engage in war) and relative power (dyads with a preponderance of power on one side are less likely to engage in war) are important.
[4] Also often overlooked is the implicit assumption that the hegemon is a rational, benign and probably democratic state.  These characteristics are by no means necessary conditions to achieving hegemonic powers, as evidenced by Imperial China under the Mongols or the Imperial Roman Empire.
[5] We might hypothesize that the less influenced state would be less restrained by the hegemon and thus more likely to initiate or escalate conflict, or that the more-influenced state would be more likely to initiate conflict because it has the backing of the hegemon.  It would thus be important to parse out the different kinds of hegemonic influence.  It makes a difference whether the more-influenced state is an ally of the hegemon, or simply asymmetrically economically-dependent on the hegemon.
[6] A lengthier, detailed critique of the internal incoherence underlying Mearsheimer’s arguments for a bipolar world, or as the next best thing, a Europe stabilized by controlled nuclear proliferation awaits a different opportunity.  But to give a specific example, Mearsheimer claims that the Soviet Union’s failure to aid Czechoslovakia against Germany in 1938 for geographic reasons (no shared border) offers evidence for the dangers of multipolarity (Mearsheimer, p.23).  Yet the stated problem of geographic distance is unrelated to the way power is distributed amongst nations and a hegemon would face the same difficulties when dealing with distant states.  America’s current reluctance to deal with North Korea reflects both the legacy of the great geographical distance as well as an unwillingness to provoke North Korea to use its nuclear capabilities.  The destabilizing factor of the nuclear weapons in North Korea also directly discredits Mearsheimer’s preference for nuclear proliferation, no matter how controlled or limited.
[7] The US War Department was similarly re-christened the Defense Department in 1947
[8] Arguments by analogy could also be made for the possibility of a Liberalist international system arising without the need for a central force bearing the externalities and solving the security problem by looking to the initial, often bloody, spread of such disparate ideas as democracy, Christianity and communism across regions.  Clearly, ideas can spread, take root and transform the world even in the face of great adversity.

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Justice Paper 2 – Discrimination, Random Searches and Profiling (Fall 2006)

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

Is it wrong for law enforcement officials to use racial, ethnic, or religious profiling in deciding whom to search in airports, train stations, subways?

The use of racial, ethnic or religious profiling by law enforcement officials has been much maligned by offended moralists who usually argue that policies informed by such profiling are morally wrong because they are unfairly discriminatory and distastefully reminiscent of racism.  I argue that this assessment is both correct and yet irrelevant.  By appealing to the cognitive inevitability and practical usefulness of discrimination, and with reference to communitarian assumptions, I will construct the case in favor of discriminatory practices in general.  Building upon this argument, I will submit that the moral acceptability of profiling in particular is conditional upon the empirical effectiveness of policies based on profiling methods as well as the actual content and execution of these policies.  I then discuss why this analysis holds true under a broad range of different moral frameworks including those of Aristotle, Mill, Locke and Rawls.  At this point, I will refute the claims of absolutist proponents of equality as incoherent and untenable before closing with a further defense of profiling against Kantian logic.

Defenders of profiling sometimes cite its almost actuarial nature as making it exempt from moral considerations.  In a wider sense, those who argue that profiling is not a moral question but rather an amoral question of statistics are not wrong, although the point can be more strongly made.  If we understand “discriminatory” to mean “having a belief formed before case-specific facts are known”, it would certainly appear discriminatory for law enforcement agents or individuals in general to operate based on a set of generalized assumptions, which by definition are not facts and may be falsified by as yet unknown information.  In this case, the assumption is that certain identifiable traits (race, ethnicity, religion) are correlated with a marginally higher probability that the bearer of those traits is a suicide bomber.  Furthermore, to the extent that this assumption is not based on the individual person but on generalized, probabilistic views about a class of individuals (which may be quite broadly defined), it is difficult to avoid the charge of “unfairness”, since feeling aggrieved and indignant is a common reaction to being incorrectly associated with something as unpleasant as terrorism.  But just saying that an assumption is discriminatory or even unfair is not enough to make it morally wrong.  The first important fact to remember is that the most important assumptions[1] about other people are always discriminatory (whether positive or negative).  Secondly, and more importantly, generalized assumptions are indispensable to human action, which are naturally colored by the assumptions that underlie them.  No individual has even the remotest possibility of having enough time or cognitive resources to absorb or analyze all the information needed to behave in a fully objective, rational way towards other people.  We assume things about other people all the time, often based on our own experiences and just as frequently based on how these other people look, talk and dress.  To say that assumptions are discriminatory is to miss the point[2].  We possess and construct an array of constantly shifting assumptions about other people which are both generally true and also critically useful for humans trying to navigate everyday social life or order society.

The idea that assumptions about others are a necessary fact of life is not a novel concept to communitarians, who argue that people can (and should in some cases) be classified and categorized differentially based on their life histories and circumstances.  In practice, these classifications are not static, one-dimensional or scrupulously defined.  Obviously everyone has a myriad of dynamic associations and shifting characteristics which could be the basis of assumptions by others or even (as communitarians further reason) potentially conflicting moral obligations.  Pushed to its logical limits, there is no escaping discriminatory profiling from a cognitive standpoint, which is an important realization for moral philosophers since something that is inevitable (as well as functionally necessary) can hardly be characterized as morally “wrong” or “unjust”[3], and even if we could agree on a situation where something inevitable was “unjust”, that would be a hollow conclusion since there would be nothing to be done about it.

Of course, stereotypes and assumptions can be inaccurate and not all stereotypes and assumptions are equal, nor should be treated with equal respect.  From a moral standpoint, both how these assumptions are made and how they are acted upon in practice make all the difference between right and wrong.  This idea of conditionality is actually fairly uncontroversial[4]: an assumption shared by moral philosophers with viewpoints as different as Aristotle, Mill, Locke and Rawls is that circumstances and intentions matter when it comes to judging an action or an institutional policy to be right or wrong.  For Aristotle, the telos or purpose of the searching of bags by law enforcement officials would be of primary importance.  If the primary purpose of the bag searches in question was to adhere to the principle of equal treatment of all individuals, then profiling would clearly be counterproductive and thus wrong from an Aristotelian perspective.  If however the foremost intended role of the law enforcement officials and the bag-search policy is to efficiently and effectively prevent a suicide bombing, and if using profiling methods based on race or religion best achieves this purpose, then using these methods would be good or virtuous (and therefore right) in an Aristotelian sense.  Clearly, the strength of this argument in favor of racial profiling will be closely coupled with the empirical effectiveness of profiling strategies.  Since there would be no practical reason to enact or discuss profiling if it was demonstrably useless, we shall assume for the moment that profiling strategies are well-reasoned[5] and are effective in enabling law enforcement officials to more effectively and efficiently catch suicide bombers[6].

Aside from the empirical effectiveness of profiling, another practical but morally relevant piece of information is how exactly the bag-search policy would be articulated and carried out.  Would there be disclaimers to carefully disassociate profiling from any official pejorative judgment against entire categories of people?  Would the law enforcement officials treat the affected individuals with respect and courtesy?  How inconvenient or embarrassing would the search procedures actually be for travelers?  In the context of a given city or even an entire country, we can mostly agree that preventing a suicide bomb attack would maximize general utility within the society; additionally, it is largely true that misfortune strikes hardest on the least advantaged in society because they have fewer resources with which to cope or recover.  With these two simple lines of logic we can deduce that if done in such a way as to minimize the inconvenience and embarrassment of those being searched, effectively preventing[7] a suicide bombing through searches guided by judicious profiling methods would satisfy both utilitarian thinkers as well as the Rawlsian Difference Principle, where social inequalities must be to the ultimate advantage of the least favored individuals in society.  Moreover, building upon this line of reasoning, it would be natural that a policy that evidently maximizes utility while bettering the lot of the worse-off in society would gain broad popular support.  From a Lockean paradigm of democratic society, this popular support would provide the critical element of consent that sets an important boundary on what the state can rightly do.  In other words, if profiling turned out to be an effective tool for crafting thoughtful policies that would maximize social utility while also helping the least well-off and preserving individual dignity (thus garnering popular democratic support), there would be little reason to consider the use of profiling morally wrong.

Naturally, the moral opposition to profiling does not always stop with the simple complaint that it constitutes unfair discrimination[8].  It may be argued that having law enforcement officers treating people differently based on their outward appearance (race, ethnicity, religion) is a fundamental breach of the principle of equality and of individual rights and liberties (including those enshrined in the US Constitution).

As reasonable as this may seem at first, the objection based on equality and rights falters on two different grounds, one more practical and the other more philosophical.  From a practical standpoint, the fact that individuals are undeniably unequal along almost infinite dimensions (culture, psyche, physicality, gender, age, occupation, marital status etc.) means that any attempt to treat everyone equally will quickly encounter the tension between the equally worthy ideals of equality of treatment and equality of outcome.[9]  It is precisely because of the differences between individuals that equal treatment will not result in equal outcomes and conversely that equal outcomes can only be created through unequal treatment[10].  As such, it is at least an open question whether a call for “equality” can be logically coherent and achievable in practice[11].  Additionally, it is clear that society accepts all sorts of conditionally or selectively unequal treatment as just for exactly this reason.  For example, only adults are allowed to vote, soldiers are beholden to military courts without juries (as opposed to civilian courts), citizens pay a progressive, graduated income tax, Indian reservations are exempt from many laws, there are mandatory provisions for the handicapped and so on.  While there are diverse moral principles that can be cited to justify these instances of unequal treatment, the important point to note is that equality is a nebulous concept that in practice is hard to pin down to either equal treatment or equality of outcome, and ultimately the realization of equality is largely conditional and tempered by all sorts of practical considerations, just as I have argued is the correct way to morally evaluate profiling.

Tackling the more purely philosophical argument about the equal rights and liberties of citizens, it is again insufficient to simply say that profiling is a violation of individual rights.  What exactly are these rights, where do these rights come from and why are they inviolable?  As Locke would argue, individuals are bearers both of natural rights as well as of conventional rights shaped by popular consent in the formation of a state.  At this point certain natural rights such as the right to revenge are “lost” or (more accurately) transformed and delegated to the state, for instance as the monopoly on coercion and the right to carry out retributive punishment.  At the same time, the conventional rights are exactly those that are contingent both upon majority democratic support (however defined) as well as the exact situation of that society including its worldview, level of development, technology, demographics etc.  In short, we are back to Locke’s insistence that democratic consent is the basis of the state’s rightful powers as well as the conventional rights of the citizen.  Do citizens have the conventional right not to have their bags or persons searched when they use public transport or enter an airport, assuming that this is not a natural right?  For Locke, this is a question for the people to answer through the democratic process, and I argue that this decision would likely turn on the practical effectiveness, description and execution of the proposed policy.

Beyond unfair discrimination, violation of rights to liberty and equal treatment, a final class of objections to the acceptability of profiling (with a very different philosophical pedigree) is that people should be treated as individuals and ends in themselves, and that it is wrong to force people to shoulder differential burdens only because they are perceived to belong to a certain community.  This line of reasoning draws strongly upon Kantian philosophy, which envisions a level of homogeneity among people (the possession and practice of Reason) as well as a certain level of autonomy[12] that taken together call for all individuals to be treated with equal respect (as deserving moral agents) and as ends in themselves.  From this view, search policies based on profiling supposedly only treat people as means towards the ends of the law enforcement officials without considering the individual’s feelings and humanity, and also robs individuals of their autonomy by forcing them to assume a certain (racial, ethnic, religious) identity.

I have already argued that treating others purely objectively without recourse to simplifying assumptions is merely a fanciful ideal, and may well be a dangerous delusion because it obscures the need to recognize and justify the inevitable assumptions.  Kant was wrong to assume that the possession and practice of Reason would lead everyone to a universal morality, as the long-standing lack of agreement among moralists demonstrates.  Additionally, the claim that search policies based on profiling will in fact treat persons merely as means to an end is clearly one that requires empirical support.[13]  Finally, the argument that search policies based on profiling force individuals to bear the burdens of a certain identity rests on the mistaken assumptions that such policies necessarily define our identities, and that the burden of such search policies is unacceptably onerous, beyond what we can be reasonably asked to bear.  Clearly, we must conclude that these are conditional arguments dependent on the specifics of the policy and its execution.  There is no inherent moral reason to reject racial, ethnical or religious profiling.

   

[1] For our purposes these assumptions are largely concerned with questions of identity, abilities, motivations, intentions and emotions.  For example, we assume –as Bentham, Kant and Rawls do– that everyone has the capacity for moral reasoning and also the capacity to experience pain and pleasure.  We often instinctively assume –in the communitarian tradition– that people feel a sense of duty and affiliation to wider groups including their kinsmen and their countrymen.  Another example is the common assumption, based on our cultural history, that women are (either by nature or by socialization) better caregivers for young children.
[2] Assumptions such as, “This elderly lady would probably appreciate it if I offer her my seat on the bus” or “He looks stressed and unhappy now so perhaps I should be nicer to him”.
[3] For many thinkers, the link between action and the effects of action with the realm of morality and personal responsibility hinges on the idea that something can be autonomously (Kant) or freely (Locke) caused or chosen.  Events that are purely random or fundamentally inevitable are thus usually excluded from analysis of moral worth or at least from the paradigm of human responsibility.  For example, the natural distribution of talents is often called a “moral fact” or simply “a fact” unsuitable for moral evaluation in and of itself.
[4] Of course, there can be major disagreements over the scope and limits of conditionality, but the basic premise that context can matter is hardly refutable.  For example, few people would argue that the act of taking some jewelry and running away necessarily constitutes theft or wrongdoing if they knew, for example, that the owners had asked that person to take the item urgently to the auctioneers.  Additionally, while we might all agree that “theft is wrong”, it is easy to see that, at least at the margin, terms like “theft” are socially constructed and contested – libertarians sometimes argue that mandatory state taxes are a form of theft and coercion while communitarians may see the same taxes as a legitimate moral obligation.
[5] As opposed to capriciously or willfully based on malice or similarly subjective or malevolent motives.
[6] My hunch is that the practical usefulness of bag- or body-searches in airports, train stations and subways (in increasing order of futility) to catch suicide bombers is in fact quite limited, which would definitively answer the moral question for me.  The point of this essay is to affirm the position that nothing about profiling itself suggests that it is categorically wrong.
[7] Even just increasing the probability of preventing an attack can be argued to satisfy the utilitarian calculus because the utility to the non-existent bomber and the supporters of terrorism drops to zero while the utility to citizens of knowing that there are deterrent and protective security measures in place remains real.
[8] This essay assumes that the relevant statistics upon which profiling is based are not in question and thus “unfair” in this case excludes the idea of arbitrariness.  For example, we will not consider the type of argument that says profiling is unfair because a young Muslim Arab man is not more likely to be a terrorist then an elderly Buddhist woman.  I assume generally that profiling will be based on valid information.
[9] For example, few would suggest that we should always treat a pregnant woman the same way we would treat a young man or a bedridden grandmother in terms of attention from the authorities, as well as access to particular types and amounts of healthcare and nutrition.
[10] This irresolvable conundrum was identified, for example, by libertarians such as Hayek and the Friedmans, who all additionally noted the troubling incompatibility of equality of outcomes with freedom, which compelling discredits the desirability of equality of outcomes.
[11] Libertarians and other liberals are usually in favor of equality of treatment, which interpreted loosely (as the Friedmans want), is not incompatible with profiling; Rawls offered the Difference Principle as a moral gauge for social inequality, and I have already argued that profiling policies can conditionally satisfy this principle.  Communitarians tend to focus on the cases where equality of outcomes (such as equal preservation of both minority and majority cultures) is preferable over equality of treatment; again, the specifics of the question determine the moral question.
[12] Free from the constraints of what communitarians would call the “narrative self”.
[13] As earlier suggested, law enforcement officials could be polite, efficient and respectful, and the policy could be publicized as a security measure with absolutely no intent to disparage or marginalize any group based on race, ethnicity or religion.  All of this would help to make search policies based on profiling acceptable to Kantian thinkers.

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Justice Paper 1 – Can Torture be Justified as a Last Resort?

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003
Jason Yeo, Oct 2005 

 

[NB: A bibliography apparently was not required for this piece of writing so the references are not cited as thoroughly as I would have liked.  There are many little problems in the essay, of course, but the main flaw is the clear logical fallacy that the rightful powers of the state are always limited by what rights citizens can delegate to the state based on natural rights.  For example, the state has the right to levy taxes, conduct (justified) search and seizure and incarcerate criminals, all of which individuals do not have the right to do in the Lockean “state of nature”.]

—

Can Torture be Justified as a Last Resort to Prevent an Imminent Terrorist Attack?

No, torture is not justified, even as a last resort to prevent an imminent terrorist attack.  In this paper I will begin by highlighting the precedence and moral priority of individual and state rights as central considerations over utilitarian principles.  I will proceed to draw a clear distinction between death (and capital punishment) and non-lethal torture to show why the difference is not “merely aesthetic” as Dershowitz writes but instead illuminates a clear moral principle against torture.  I will argue that because of its fundamentally cruel, debasing nature, torture cannot be rightfully used by a society that draws its legitimacy and moral force from the consent and will of its members.  At the same time I will refute the assertion that the acceptance of capital punishment provides similar grounds for accepting torture.  I will also use the loosely-interpreted moral idea of “innocent until proven guilty” to reject the reasoning that “imminent terrorists” can be deserving of less than human treatment.  I will conclude by reminding us of the empirical case against torture before reiterating the more powerful argument that rights are prior to utility and torture can never be rightfully practiced.

In considering torture as a last resort to prevent an imminent terrorist attack, which is after all an action of the state against an individual, there are two key issues – the rightful powers of the state, and the rights of individuals within that state, including suspected terrorists.  While both sets of rights are firmly against torture under any circumstances, I will concentrate on the rightful powers of the state although the same reasoning upholds the rights of the individual or suspected terrorist.

So why is a discussion of rights more relevant in this case than a discussion of pure utility, which Dershowitz believes is the central justification of torture as a last resort?  It is because without a system of rights the state cannot exist with any powers whatsoever and hence states are defined by their rightful powers and how these powers are justified, before any considerations of utility.  A democratic state cannot rightfully act, even to maximize utility, if nobody agrees to the action in question or if everyone is opposed to the proposed action.  In responding to a consideration of rights, utilitarian thinkers would postulate either that individual rights are immaterial and imaginary and cannot be raised above the principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”, as Bentham would argue[1], or that individual rights are a reflection of rule utilitarianism, where history has shown as a general rule that the recognition of these rights ultimately leads to the case of maximal utility, an idea espoused by Mill.  Bentham and Mill are right in sharing an underlying assumption with Locke that human society is based on the belief that cooperation improves the utility of everyone above what they would have enjoyed in the pre-political condition that Locke termed the “state of nature”.  However, Bentham and Mill are both mistaken in their assumption that people would agree to any and everything, including increased risk to their own liberty, in order to maximize the social sum of utility, and that individuals cannot possess and uphold moral beliefs and principles beyond utilitarianism in coming together to form a democratic society.  These moral beliefs can stem from religious convictions not justified by utilitarian concerns[2], such as Locke’s belief that individuals do not have the right to willful self-destruction because we are God’s creations.  Alternatively, these beliefs can be based on theories of natural rights, on moral intuition, on simple preferences or even on what Dershowitz disparagingly calls “aesthetics”.  The point is that the state only has as much rightful power as people choose to delegate to it, and people can make this choice (by majority or some other agreed-upon scheme) based on whatever criteria they choose.  Further, the rights of the state flow from the consent and delegated rights of the people, but individuals cannot rightfully authorize the state to perform acts that they would not have been morally permitted to perform themselves in a state of nature.  Thus the rightful powers of the state are constrained both by what the majority (however defined) of its members want, and also by what powers this majority can rightfully delegate to the state.            

So what is it about torture that puts it beyond the rightful powers of the state, and why is it that individuals cannot, even by absolute consensus, morally authorize the state to carry out torture, under any circumstances?  The answer is simple – torture is cruelty, and by definition torture in this case is the deliberate dismantling and crushing of another individual’s humanity and moral will.  By subjecting an individual to pain and torment beyond their capacity to bear mentally or physically, they are robbed of their ability to think, to reason, and to act morally.  Being tortured is equivalent to being reduced to a bestial state of reflexive self-preservation and desperate instinct.  No one is surprised by (and torturers actually capitalize on) the reality that under torture individuals will abandon their beliefs, their loved ones and their self-respect.  In short, the victim of torture can be considered to be in a coerced, inflicted state of insanity, where they have been intentionally deprived of the reason, morality and free will which comprise the essence of their humanity.  Beyond the degrading and devastating moral effect upon the victim, some would argue that performing torture even reduces the torturer to a lesser moral state because they have resorted to bestial, inhuman means to coerce another against their will.[3]  In other words, torturers have abandoned the use of reason – the hallmark of humanity – in favor of coercive force – the domain of beasts and tyrants.  It is not necessary to go that far to see that torture is always a complete debasement of the victim’s humanity and hence is never within an individual’s rights under any reasonable scheme of morality.

It should be uncontroversial that no individual human being has the natural right to subject another person to cruelty or to strip them of their humanity, and society certainly cannot delegate this right to the state when they do not individually possess this right to start with.  Even if they could rightfully do so, it is unimaginable that people would consent to form a society where their self-possession and humanity was even more in peril than in a state of nature.  This limit on state powers based on rights and consent traces itself to Locke, who would no doubt also argue that if self-possession be accepted as the given basis of private property as he thinks, then humanity is the most essential and inviolable of all our possessions.  Again, if no individual can claim this right over other humans – that is the right to rob them of their humanity and coerce them into a bestial state of submission – then no individual or majority of individuals can authorize their state to do the same on their behalf.

Some might be tempted at this stage to argue that currently in America, it is considered acceptable to punish serious crimes on pain of death, and thus a society that supports capital punishment cannot logically oppose non-lethal, non-permanent torture as a last resort on moral grounds.  There are in fact several reasons why this is false.  As a preliminary point, the case for capital punishment is by no means settled in this country, given that many individual states have expressed their opposition, and the bulk of developed nations including most of Europe has already concluded that capital punishment is immoral and a violation of human rights.  It may well be that one generation from now capital punishment will be considered a regrettable past wrong, just as slavery or the denial of voting rights to women is now remembered in America.  More importantly, as may already be obvious, there is a distinct moral difference between torture and death which goes beyond aesthetics.  While death is a fact of human existence, and can be natural, dignified, peaceful and even beautiful, torture can never rightfully be any of these things.  It is impossible to view torture as anything other than state-sanctioned cruelty, designed to strip a human being of their humanity, to reduce them to their most bestial state of instincts.  This is a situation where the victims are deprived of their capacity to reason and to interact with other people as moral equals.  It is a situation of moral coercion (which is an oxymoron since morality is a question of free will and human agency and thus cannot be coerced).  Empirically, victims of torture have described this state as worse than death, with the painful psychological effects of their compromised humanity tormenting them for the rest of their lives.  Society does not condone torturous, cruel deaths for convicted criminals for precisely the belief that even criminals have the right to their dignity and humanity, even up to their final breaths.  The distinction between torture and capital punishment is that torture treats individuals as less than human and contemptuously reduces them to that debased state while capital punishment still respects the humanity of the convicted criminal.

A second critical difference between torture and capital punishment comes from the logical sequence of crime and punishment and also answers the argument that imminent terrorists deserve whatever they get, and torture can be considered in part a punishment for their actions.  American society is founded on the basis of equality before the law, of innocence until proven guilty, and of guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  These maxims are meant to ensure that the rights of individuals are protected above utilitarian concerns.[4]  Only after these conditions have been satisfied (a fair trial proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt) can the state pronounce a Lockean “state of war” against an individual and enact punishment.  Even ignoring the fact that cruelty can never be a rightful action of the state, we must recognize that none of the three listed criteria can ever be satisfied in the practical situations that proponents of torture as a last resort imagine may arise.  The truth is that there will always be uncertainty, and no time for even a semblance of a fair trial in a situation where torture may be “useful”[5].  In the end, until the ticking bomb (the cataclysmic image of choice by supporters of torture) goes off, that act of terrorism has not yet been committed.  There is thus no case for any retributive element or argument for desert when considering the use of torture as a last resort.  Moreover, even convicted criminals and prisoners of war are not stripped completely of their rights, and we still expect a civilized, moral society to treat them with dignity and with respect for their humanity, a principle which torture clearly violates

It is important to note that there remain many empirical questions surrounding the usefulness of torture under the relevant conditions of uncertainty and time-pressure, the ability of our judicial and police systems to administer and enforce a limited regime of torture in a transparent and legitimate fashion, as well as the negative externalities associated with the US condoning torture under any circumstances.  All of this casts doubt on the utilitarian argument for torture as a last resort.  Moreover, Dershowitz himself writes that the “symbolic setback” to the respect for human rights and the strong prohibition against torture for anything less than situations of last resort is the “strongest argument against any resort to torture,” citing empirical evidence that rule utilitarianism is in favor of prohibiting torture under any circumstance.  While this is certainly another argument in favor of absolutely prohibiting torture, it is not the most important one.  The fact is that considerations of expedience do not change moral facts and principles.  Just because something ordinarily proscribed becomes desirable to do under extraordinary circumstances does not automatically mean that it suddenly becomes morally permissible.  Few proponents of torture as a last resort have suggested permitting the torture of innocent people, such as a suspected terrorist’s mother, or spouse and children in the presence of the suspect.  Yet these tactics are likely to be the most efficient in getting valid information in a timely manner.  Clearly there are, at least intuitively, moral limits to the utilitarian argument.[6]  These limits can be attributed in this case to the rights of individuals and the rights of states.

Dershowitz is most compelling when he says that the slippery slope presented by legitimizing torture obliges us to draw “a principled break” on the limits of what can be done.  The reality is that moral principles show us that this break must be a complete condemnation of torture, even if we might hypothesize optimistically that torture might bring about some immediate good, and that two wrongs make a right.  We have to accept that we cannot prevent all terrible events from occurring.  Police officers, soldiers, hostage negotiators or medical personnel often arrive too late to prevent tragedy.  In the case of a terrorist who has (presumably) successfully planned and initiated a terrorist act on US soil, interrogators trying to prevent this attack may be constrained by time, by the law or even by “aesthetics” in what they can do.  I propose that the actions of the state be constrained by the morality of our society, which is founded on the principles of human dignity, equality of rights and presumption of innocence.  If the only possible reactions to an imminent terrorist attack are an abandonment of these fundamental principles, and an abandonment of the legitimacy of the state’s powers, then these actions are beyond what we should expect the relevant authorities to perform.  If some intelligence agent or police officer feels the need to employ torture, let them do so with the clear understanding that they will have to face their day in court to defend their actions against the weight of morality.  

Bibliography

Bentham, Jeremy, Principles of Morals and Legislation, MR 22 Sourcebook, 2005
Dershowitz, Alan, “The Case for Torturing the Ticking Bomb Terrorist,” from Why Terrorism Works, pp. 142-149
Johnson, Robert, “Kant’s Moral Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2004/entries/kant-moral/.
Locke, John, Second Treatise of Government, edited by C.B. Macpherson, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1980
Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, edited by George Sher, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2001

    

[1] Although Bentham argued that only consequences mattered and that conceptions of natural rights were ultimately rested on the utility of the outcomes, his principle of having no person’s utility worth less than the next person’s implicitly invokes considerations of equality and human worth that are the starting point for many, if not all, rights-based moral theories.
[2] Mill argues that all religious morality can be shown to correspond to utilitarian principles, but whether or not this is true, the fact is that while a belief can be shown to correspond to any number of systems of ethics, the critical one is the system that the believer accepts as the basis of their beliefs.  As an illustrative analogy, economists can develop many compelling theories of why someone trusts a certain company or buys a certain product, but what matters is what the individual in question actually thinks or believes.  I suspect that few religious people would accept that their beliefs stem solely and ultimately from utilitarian concerns.
[3] On this point Kant would say that the victim is clearly being treated only as an ends for the torturer’s goals and that the victim’s humanity is being ignored or overridden in a disrespectful manner.  This would be a clear violation of the Humanity formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which is the basis of our moral duties in a Kantian system.
[4] For example, while utility may be maximized by incarcerating a violent murderer, if it is at the cost of incarcerating another innocent person, moral principles dictate that this is an unacceptable and unjustifiable bargain.
[5] Additionally, it has also been argued that in reality torture usually achieves little in terms of generating useful information because trained victims know how to resist and confound torturers for long enough that their secrets lose their relevance, while untrained victims will simply say anything to end their misery, which equally confounds interrogators.  All this puts serious strain on the utilitarian principle as a general justification for an institutional system of torture under any circumstances.
[6] This is something neither Bentham nor Mill would have recognized, although Mill would have argued that there can be greater utility in the long-run or in the larger sense as a result of accepting lower utility in individual, limited situations.

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French 170, Position Paper 4, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

Jason Yeo
French 170: The City
October 21, 2004 Position Paper 4

Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project –

Convolute E: Haussmannization, Barricade Fighting

Benjamin’s mammoth collection of notes, references and illustrations that comprise “The Arcades Project” capture for us a flavor of Paris as a city in flux, poised uncertainly across a half century of changes that marked the rise and fall of the passage, and major urban works directed by Baron Haussmann under the commission of Napoleon III.  While Benjamin deals with many major themes including the historical significance of the arcades and the complex relationships between social movements, architecture and mental constructions and representations of urban space, I will focus this position paper on convolute E titled “Hausmannization, Barricade Fighting”, concentrating on the effects of Haussmann’s projects on the intrinsic experience of the city for the observer and the citizen, paying particular attention to how these developments relate to the representations of the city in previously discussed writings by Mercier, Baudelaire and Balzac.

With the boulevardization of Paris, the labyrinthine city of Balzac, referred to as “musty and close” in this convolute is in rapid decline.  While the Paris of Balzac’s Ferragus is a dark, winding maze filled with mysteries and dangers, a trap for hapless souls, in Haussmann’s Paris the long, wide avenues point the way straight out of the city, offering a means of escape.  Benjamin records that Haussmann’s work to open up the narrowest, most indigent quartiers to allow “the influx of better air” was a “battle against poverty and revolution”, echoing Balzac’s depiction of the sunless streets being havens for criminals and assassins, the decrepit and dangerous environment being both cause and effect.  Yet Benjamin’s research leads us to conclude the despite the outward improvement in conditions within the city, the directions of escape, previously so elusive, are now even more desired and resorted to by Parisians due to the increasing alienation of the citizen from the city. 

The unrecognizable, monumental, artificially inorganic form of the embellished city, with its increasingly uniform architecture, iron constructions and flickering gas lamps transforms the city into a crossroads, a temporary resting place.  In many ways, the city is no longer a place for people, but rather for workers, visitors and speculators.  This is hardly surprising, given Haussmann’s dismissive attitude towards the populace and their needs.   “Hundreds of thousands of families, who work in the center of the capital, sleep in the outskirts.  This movement resembles a tide: in the morning the workers stream into Paris, and in the evening the same wave of people flows out.  It is a melancholy image…” This ebbing, impermanent nature of inhabiting Paris evokes strongly yet contrasts against the eternal city that Balzac and Mercier recognized and described, with its unchanging cyclical rhythms but with streets lined with ancient houses, where people lived and died.

Paris is no longer a backdrop against which the people form the objects of interest in the fl⮥ur’s gaze like that of Baudelaire’s, but rather becomes a series of panoramas and prospects boasting embellishments and other features that now capture the observer’s gaze.  “He saw Paris… His gaze fixed itself most avidly on the space between the column in the Place Vendôme and the cupola of Les Invalides.”  Structures, palaces and vistas have replaced the widows, crones and laborers of Mercier and Baudelaire; the inorganic has triumphed over the organic.  The city has been punctured, ruptured and remodeled so radically, rapidly and violently that the life has escaped from its walls, some of it crushed by the demolitions and some of it escaping to the suburbs.

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The Problem with Scholarship Bond-Breakers

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003
So here is what I think about the people who whine about their scholarship bonds – get over it already.  I simply do not accept the line of logic that goes, “Oh, but how can any 18 or 19-year-old be expected to make decisions about the next eleven years of their life?”  The truth is that everyone is faced with important decisions at that age, some of them having a more lasting impact than others, and the onus is on would-be scholars to make a well-informed decision (for which they have many tools at their disposal), and at the end of the day much of the griping demonstrates a desire to personally profit in the absence of personal risk and without concern for others. 

Let us start with the idea that signing a scholarship bond is something an 18 or 19-year-old should not be reasonably expected to do.  On the face of it that is simply preposterous.  Unless the person making this claim also believes that 19 year-olds should not be allowed to marry, stand trial for criminal actions, enter the armed forces, go to medical school (which carries a very similar bond in Singapore) or basically make any major decisions (for which they must bear the consequences), than this position is untenable.  Throughout human civilization virtually all 19-year-olds have had to make major, life-altering or even life-or-death decisions, or have been expected to.   

 

 

 

Of course, the fact that such decision-making is expected of and thrust upon many (if not all) adolescents may not mean that these expectations are reasonable or that the results are optimal, my first point is simply that these expectations are normal and well-established, in every time and place since recorded history began.  Whining, unhappy scholars are in no way unique in this respect and should not expect particular attention on this point unless they wish in retrospect that their right to make such decisions at that age be removed entirely (and also for wider society).

Furthermore, it is reasonable to think that potential scholars are well-placed to make good decisions with regard to the form, location and funding of their tertiary educations.  It is not as if each scholar was forced to make this decision in a vacuum – every potential scholar is welcome to investigate their options, likely prospects within the funding organisation and so on, with the explicit support of the funding organisations who want these decisions to be made in an optimal fashion for all involved.  

Also, these scholars-to-be, whom we can reasonably assume to be as intelligent as or perhaps more so than the “average” university applicant, largely have access to a large support network of friends, family, teachers, seniors and so on who can answer their questions, help them focus on the important factors and weigh the costs and benefits of their decision, whatever this may be.  It is eminently reasonable to expect that the individuals signing scholarship bonds are well aware of what they are signing up for and have considered the likely outcome from a personal standpoint and are happy with or at least willing to accept the terms.  In short, that they are making a well-informed, thoughtful and deliberate decision that they believe is in their best interests.  If they later change their minds because of completely unforeseeable circumstances, that may be considered reasonable, but truly how many scholars decide they are unhappy for unforeseeable reasons?  I have yet to personally hear any anecdotal complaints that sounded even remotely novel or unexpected.  They mostly run the tired gamut of “but I could have a better/more interesting/more glamorous job with colleagues/employers I like better, in a more liberal environment, with better compensation, overseas with my long-distance American/British significant other, where I could live more comfortably, pursuing a PhD which I can’t do here, in the research area I discovered a passion for in college…”  None of these reasons are trivial to those doing the grousing, of course (nor should they be), but neither are they surprising, unforeseeable developments.  The point is that these situations are ones which would-be scholars should have already considered when they agreed to accept the terms of the scholarship.  It is not hard to understand – in exchange for the cost of university education over a number of years, personal expenses, travel, in-house training, guaranteed fast-track career, a salary (and whatever other perks there are), each scholar agrees to give up the freedom to pick their employer, job-location and specific job-type for a number of years.  That is the contract they have signed, and they should be prepared to honour it. 

 

 

Some disgruntled bonded scholars will naturally say that if they are truly unhappy, they should be allowed to leave.  I would respond by saying that if they were indeed desperately, violently or depressively unhappy then sure, they should be allowed to break their bonds (and my hunch is that this is the status quo).  However, this begs the question as to how and why they could have become so extremely unhappy.  Again, I can accept completely unforeseeable or extra-ordinary (or even merely uncommon) circumstances as a legitimate cause, but virtually all foreseeable causes should not result in such a drastic situation.  But back to the idea of being “truly unhappy”, leaving aside clinical depression, how unhappy is “truly unhappy”?  The problem is that outside from the kind of major psychological problem just discussed, almost nothing can be reasonably considered “truly unhappy”.  From the perspective of the scholarship-granting organization, the point is not whether the scholar feels that they could be happier elsewhere, but whether they can be happy and productive for the period of their bond and beyond with the organisation, as these scholars have formally agreed to at least try to do.  It would be unreasonable to expect that the government (or any scholarship-making organisation) should be prepared to disburse large sums of money over many years while in practice being very lax in holding scholars to their bonds.  Thus, when it comes to foreseeable challenges, everything from mild dissatisfaction (“the culture in this office is so parochial sometimes, and my boss can be very uninformed”) to grudging grouses (“I had to turn down that lucrative private sector overseas job offer”) are simply issues that scholars have agreed to work through, and scholarship-granting organisations should not be expected to relax their expectations.  (In other words: shut up, grin and bear it, like you said you would.)  

 

 

This brings us to the next common complaint from unhappy scholars – that there should not be any moral stigma associated with bond-breaking, mainly because they have already paid back the money spent by the organisation on their university education.  And not just that, the aggrieved will emphasize, but paid back with interest!   Therefore, these (pre-/ex-)scholars will reason, they no longer owe the organisation (or society) anything and have done nothing wrong.  This reasoning convinces lots of people (in my experience often people considering breaking their bonds) but there are at least two glaring problems with that logic.  The first has to do with the terms of their scholarship, and the second has to do with the (moral) meaning of contracts.  

 

 

Remember, these scholarship organisations were not acting as banks making educational loans.  In return for their investment in time, effort and money, these scholarship-granting organisations were expecting in return something other than money, and in some ways worth intangibly more than the time and money spent.  They were contracting to have in their service an educated graduate who would be familiar with and committed to the organisation for at least the bond-period.  In other words, unless scholarship bond-breakers can give the organisation such a graduate, they have not, as they may want to believe, “paid back” their bond, and even if these ex-scholars could supply such a graduate, they would not have fulfilled the exact terms of their scholarship (which applied to them individually).  The money they have to pay is instead a penalty, or damages owed the scholarship-granting organisation when a scholar reneges on their contract.  It is organisations cutting their losses after a bad transaction.  

 

 

Next, we come to the idea that “transaction” and “contract” are morally neutral business terms like “interest rate” and “delivery schedule”.  Simply put, this line of thought is just false.  Even generally, transactions and contracts often do carry a moral value, such as when pharmaceutical companies are setting prices for HIV/AIDS medications or when Shell decides to transact with the internationally-unrecognised and politically-repressive Nigerian government or when a construction firm contracts with the government to build elevated highways that conform to established building codes.  Clearly, it is the actual content (and its wider context and implications) of the transaction or contract that determine its association with morality.  When it comes to scholarships in particular, there is quite evidently the larger, societal issue of educational opportunity and meritocracy which many scholars (including those who break their bonds) would recognise introduces a moral dimension.  The fact is that scholarships represent a zero-sum game, as do opportunities for university education, to a certain extent.  By taking up a scholarship, scholars have also taken up the social responsibility to honour the terms of that contract (just as the building contractor building power plants, office buildings or transport networks to-specification); in this case that responsibility is to be educated for an agreed specified purpose.  This is especially true for government scholars where the scholarship board is selecting scholars to serve the people or even run the country.  Of course, the worst case scenario morally is the scholar who pretends to be completely committed to serving the organisation in order to be offered the scholarship when this is not the case, right from the beginning.  This amounts to little more than fraud, which is intuitively morally wrong. At this point it should be briefly mentioned that at least one way to understand the immorality (and not just the illegality) associated with the non-fulfilment of a contract (expressed intuitively by words like “untrustworthy” and “dishonourable”) is to consider that the honouring of contracts and the reasonable expectation that contracts will be honoured is what allows society to function effectively (or at all, Realist political scientists would say).  Working from this starting point, contracts and contract theory form the basis for an entire established brand of morality within the philosophical tradition.  No one should be surprised to find that scholarship bond-breakers are often judged as immoral if morality is so firmly rooted in the honouring of contracts.  

 

 

At the end of the day, my guess is that many of the disgruntled (ex-)scholars I have in mind are well aware of the points I have just made (especially since many of them no doubt took university classes that extensively discussed law, philosophy and morality) but are willing to ignore or downplay them, while focusing on reasoning that revolves around their personal emotions, desires and opportunities.  Of course this kind of self-preoccupation (or selfishness, if you like) is neither unusual nor even necessarily worthy of any moral judgement.  However, in the case of scholars, who have deliberately and willingly committed themselves to a particular and important social or organisational role in exchange for the various benefits of their scholarship, such a willingness to ignore the moral (and wider) implications of their actions demonstrates a certain level of impatient callousness and overriding self-concern that is indeed shameful to observe, whether it be in scholars, or in politicians, teachers, and medical practitioners (not to mention any other occupation).  

 

As a final postscript, I will say that I would not be the least bit surprised if there are perfectly reasonable cases to be made for individual scholars who want to break their bonds.  They are welcome to argue, for example, that by instead doing (insert whatever it is they want to do after breaking their scholarship bond), they can contribute more to society or to the world (an often un-provable argument which still does not refute any of the facts about contracts and its association with morality).  Or, as I have consistently recognised, there may be extraordinary or unforeseeable circumstances affecting that particular scholar.  Nevertheless, as I see it there is simply no generalised argument to absolve all (or even most) scholars who wish to break, or have already broken, their scholarship bonds of the fact that they are acting badly and should be (a)shamed.  It is their individual duty to make a case out of their own unique circumstances.  If everyone did just that, it would probably be easier for those who truly should be allowed to break their bonds to do so since they would not be confused with the run-of-the-mill disaffected and impatient scholar longing for greener pastures.   

(Fall 2005)

NB: I am not (and have never been) bonded to any scholarship-granting organisation, something I decided quite quickly was best for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Singlish Conversations

Wednesday, January 1st, 2003

 Introduction:  The following are excerpts from two emails I sent to various Americans in response to the question: “What do Singaporeans Speak?”  My replies have been left unedited for style, grammar and spelling.

> but I guess I don’t read in whatever you speak in
> Singapore (don’t tell me it’s English ) )

There isn’t really a simple answer to the question: “What do people in Singapore speak?”, although if there was one, it would be – English )

Now this is amusing ) Almost every time I’ve been to the States (about a half-dozen times over the years), I get comments like: “Wow, where did you learn to speak English so well?”, and others like it. I always think, “Are they saying it sort of condescendingly? – As in ‘Look, the Asian speaks our language!’” Because the truth is, English is my ‘mother-tongue’ and it used to be odd for me to imagine that other Asians weren’t fluent in English… You see, English is the language of instruction in virtually all schools here (for all non-language classes) from kindergarten up, although everyone is required to take at least ten (count ‘em) years of another language from grade school till high school (parents’ decisions correspond largely to race, although not necessarily – generally, Indians learn Tamil, Punjabi, Sanskrit etc, Malays take Bahasa Malayu, Chinese take Mandarin, and Eurasians/Caucasians take French/German/Malay/Japanese…), and a goodly portion of the brighter kids take a third language for up to six years before college.

So what do we speak in Singapore, which has four official languages (English, Malay, Mandarin, Tamil)? Well, many of the Chinese speak Mandarin Chinese as their ‘mother-tongue’ (with which they are most comfortable) or any of a variety of Chinese dialects (and many people speak a number of these fluently, especially older Singaporeans), including Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka etc. People often babble in their own languages in a racially homogenous group, e.g., a group of Malays friends will mostly converse in Malay, with a sprinkling of English. But in a racially diverse setting, people will just naturally stick to English.

But speaking of speaking a mixture of languages, that brings me to the topic of ‘Singlish’, or our own colloquial strain/dialect of English, which has developed as a nationally understood blend of words, phrases and expressions borrowed and adapted from various languages, structured with a very truncated and mangled version of English grammar/syntax, spoken with the lilting, sing-song manner of Malay, characterised by a very staccato sort of pronunciation, and punctuated with Chinese-style exclamations (I think they are known as ‘particles’ to linguists). The government has spoken out against the use of Singlish a couple of times (using the pejorative term ‘broken-English’ interchangeably with ‘Singlish’), fearing that the pervasive use of Singlish would erode our economic competitive advantage (the fact that everyone understands/speaks English is certainly one of the things that help us regularly attract the highest per capita FDI in the world). At the same time, there is a vocal (pun not intended) portion of Singaporeans who think that we should be proud of our national identity, and celebrate what makes our culture unique.

In any case, the ‘legitimacy’ of Singlish has been growing, with a Japanese-Singlish dictionary being published (in Japan) in the last couple of years, and quite a number of linguists pointing out that Singlish has all the characteristics of a stable, full-fledged English dialect… In fact, some of my seniors at Harvard told me that they used to be invited to a “Dialects of English” lecture every term to just read something or converse in front of the entire class to ‘demonstrate’ Singlish. Personally, I wouldn’t mind having to do that, except I’ve heard that that professor has left the College. )

> I’d love to talk to you more about the way people interact in all the different languages,
> how they influence the culture, and everything.
> I’m especially interested to know whether or not english is the “main” language
> spoken out of basic necessity and commonness,
> and if the result is that there’s no particular “english singaporean” subculture.What do you mean by “particular ‘english singaporean’ subculture”? If you’re referring to “Singlish”, a purist would note that there are different strains and degrees of ’singlish’, in the way its spoken and its similarity to “Queen’s English” (which is what we’re taught in school).

In fact, there were political reasons as to why English was chosen as the language of instruction/administration in Singapore after we gained independence from the British Empire (aside from the economic ones I mentioned previously). Being a multicultural nation – Chinese (76.5%); Malays (13.8%); Indians (8.1%); Others (1.6%), it was important for then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to make sure that no one could accuse the infant government of being unfair to any one racial group (e.g., forcing the majority Chinese population to speak Malay or the *indigenous* Malays to speak Mandarin), which might result in violent civil unrest. So English was the solution, since then everyone was put on a level playing field, linguistically, i.e., equally (dis)advantaged. Interestingly, ex-PM Lee himself is english-speaking, and was educated at Cambridge, England.

Today, ordinary Singaporeans tend to associate high proficiency in English with:

a) high intelligence (a vestige of colonial envy of the west?)
b) privileged background (albeit that most of Singapore is resoundingly middle class)
c) a bright future (in employment and otherwise)
d) all of the above

But bilingualism is even more highly valued (particularly Mandarin and English), and linguists (who speak several Chinese dialects, or Japanese or Malay) are both well-respected and in-demand, since being able to converse in a language that a customer/patient/client feels most comfortable in is potentially very valuable (particularly in a country with 7.6m tourists annually, compared to our 4.16m population).

Actually, two decades of national policy to encourage all Chinese to speak Mandarin has all but destroyed our rich national culture of Chinese dialects, to the extent that many young Singaporean Chinese are no longer able to understand Beijing Opera, Cantonese movies (from Hong Kong), or even their grandparents, who may speak little English or Mandarin. Again, the reasons for this move were political, as in earlier days the Chinese would be politically aligned by their dialect groups, and there would be bloody clashes and disputes (a bit like the situation within India, with the Sikhs and the Indians). Anyway, the government’s solution was to try and find common ground and forge stronger understanding amongst the Chinese by making everyone speak Mandarin, and radio and television shows in dialect were taken off the air, to be replaced with mandarin ones. (Interesting trivia: as a result of the reunification of the written Chinese script by Shih Huang Di, the first emperor of China, centuries ago, all Chinese dialects are written the same way, although they are pronounced very differently. So a 1960s radio news broadcast would be read by a number of different people in different dialects from the same written script, though none of the newsreaders could understand each other in conversation ))

I guess the moral is that people have to be able to talk to one another in a common language to forge a strong social compact?

Last thing to mention – there are now last-ditch efforts to revive and preserve the use of dialects in Singapore, but most people believe its a lost cause – once the chain of language use and transmission from mother to child is broken, a certain richness of the language will be lost, and presently there are few compelling economic/political/cultural reasons likely to motivate people to learn them… (same story with the thousands of other fading languages/dialects globally).

Jason S. Yeo, Feb-Apr 2003

Posted in General Posts | 74 Comments »

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