Sex Trafficking and Labor Exploitation

By Channing Spencer

As a society, we tend to deny the existence of modern-day slavery and claim that slavery was abolished roughly 150 years ago. It is, therefore, important to acknowledge that slavery does exist in the world today and differentiate between historical slavery and modern-day slavery. As defined by Tim McCarthy, the Director of the Human Rights and Social Movements Program at the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Perspective’s faculty advisor, a slave is “someone who is forced or coerced into working against their will without pay under the threat of violence.”  Modern-day slavery is, essentially, the term used to refer to such immoral acts as child labor exploitation, sex trafficking, and other attempts to subjugate individuals to perform tasks against their will. There are various estimates of the number of modern-day slaves, ranging from 12 to 27 million. Regardless of the exact number, it is undeniable that modern-day slavery is an issue that affects millions of people.

What is most shocking is that many people have either never heard of modern-day slavery, or do not know what it means. Even when we do hear about modern-day slavery, it is not referred to as such.  There have been countless media reports of child labor exploitation, sweat shop workers, and sex trafficking. Often times, the cases that are most memorable are the sensationalized accounts of sex trafficking stings from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In many ways, the media portrays modern-day slavery as a foreign issue, allowing us to ignore the existence of slavery in our midst. Though the media should be lauded for covering this obscure issue, we must recognize that slavery is as much a domestic issue as it is an international one.

As of March 15, 2010, a Louisiana man was arrested for trafficking two teenage girls to be used as prostitutes. And still, society continues to ignore this issue. According to McCarthy, there is a psychological barrier to acknowledging the existence of modern-day slavery. It seems conceptually impossible for there to be slaves, anywhere, let alone in the United States, a nation which prides itself on its unwavering defense of human rights and individual liberties. To acknowledge the existence of slavery would require Americans to admit failure—a failure to uphold certain democratic values. Moreover, our notion of slavery is so deeply embedded in a historical, racialized context that we fail to realize that the slavery of today does not look like the slavery of the past.

Today, it is almost universally accepted that slavery is an inherent moral wrong. There are minimum wage laws that vary from country to country, international laws against issues like sex trafficking, and transnational networks which serve as watchdogs for human rights. The question then becomes, why is modern-day slavery so prevalent?

The answer is not surprising: money. As McCarthy notes, it does not take an economist to know that slavery is a lucrative business. Sex trafficking and labor exploitation are simply means through which “profits and privileges are built on the backs of human beings.” Let’s face it: capitalism is, by nature, exploitive and can operate with scant regard to principles because there is a “broad consensus that the logic of capitalism is untouchable.” In many ways, capitalism is deeply implicated in slavery because it perpetuates an ambitious acquisition of wealth that often motivates the cheap utilization of slave labor.  This is not to assert that modern-day slavery and global capitalism are synonymous or that capitalism is responsible for the evils of sex trafficking and labor exploitation. Likewise, to allege that capitalism is the sole cause of modern-day slavery would be to deny the existence of slavery in non-capitalist societies. Blame does not lie solely with corporations, but mostly with the individuals within the capitalist system whose blind consumerism leads them to ignore the fact that their consumption of goods like chocolate, which often contains cocoa produced by exploited child workers, provides tacit approval to the existence modern-day slavery.

The greatest irony surrounding this issue is that in the nineteenth century, there were no laws banning slavery in much of the United States but there was a substantial movement calling for its abolition. Today, according to McCarthy, we have the laws but no broad, powerful movement. Yes, there are people like Kevin Bales, the president of the Free the Slaves movement, but there must be more academic and political discourse on this topic. There needs to be a coordinated effort to engage the public, like that of the key figures of the historical anti-slavery movement.

Considering this need, the students and faculty at institutions like Harvard, which are standard-bearers of progress, have an obligation to actively engage the public on this issue. Fortunately, Harvard has a student group called Harvard College Free the Slaves (HCFTS). Founded by senior Kelli Okuji, the group is committed to raising awareness about modern-day slavery and human rights abuses. HCFTS, which is advised by Tim McCarthy and which consults with a number of experts in the field of modern-day slavery, has researched and designed a curriculum dedicated to issues of human rights. McCarthy strongly believes that this group’s efforts are a remarkable and unprecedented move towards calling attention to this major human rights issue. This group of students has identified a void in the undergraduate curriculum and has devised a way to fill it by setting a precedent in elevating the level of academic and, ultimately, political discourse surrounding sex trafficking and labor exploitation.

Unfortunately, the United States prides itself on occupying the role of the arbitrator of human rights violations, which has created an artificial distinction between the United States and the world in the realm of human rights abuses. At the Carr Center, McCarthy and his colleagues are challenging the misconception that slavery is strictly an international issue. In fact, Lou de Baca, who has been dubbed the “anti-slavery czar” of the Obama administration, has announced that for the first time, the United States will include itself in the annual TIP (trafficking in persons) report, which assesses the prevalence of slavery in various nations around the globe. This is a significant step towards the United States realizing that it, too, should be evaluated on its treatment of human rights, and that modern-day slavery is not just a foreign issue endemic to societies we view as unconscionable. Despite this major political step, it is also important to increase the public’s awareness to prevent a lag between the political and social movements. A continued denial of the existence of modern-day slavery is an act of hypocrisy, in which we placate our moral principles and avoid guilt by turning a blind eye to the evils of slavery in our own society.

By Channing Spencer

President Drew Faust recently announced the appointment of Lisa M. Coleman as Chief Diversity Officer to carry out Harvard’s mission of increasing diversity in the work force. After speaking at length with Coleman, I have no doubt that she is the right woman for the job. A self-proclaimed optimist, Coleman’s enthusiasm and passion for diversity are evident and infectious. She is undoubtedly someone with defined, innovative goals to transform the Harvard work force. With a resume to rival most, Coleman seeks to underscore that the lack of women and minorities in senior and administrative positions at Harvard is not due to a lack of qualifications. My interview with Coleman left me with the impression of her as someone who, despite her professionalism, is also down-to-earth and approachable. Speaking with her yielded insightful moments, as well as moments of laughter (see the Larry Summer’s reference!). Coleman did not hesitate to explain why diversity at Harvard is her primary goal and why there is such a disparity in the representation of women and minorities within the work force.

1. What do you think are some of the benefits of having a more diverse faculty?

Coleman: I think diversity provides a better quality of education for everyone. The changing demographics of the US make us global citizens, whether we want to be or not. As an educational institution, Harvard is at the forefront of promoting diversity. Our job is to educate for the progressive future, not the past. As a result, the benefits of diversity include academic and administrative excellence. If you put the same individuals together to work, you get the same, narrowly defined product. You get a better, more encompassing product when you put diverse minds together. Diversity produces the best ideas.

2. The reason for such a small number of women and minorities in the Harvard work force is certainly not due to a lack of qualified candidates. Do you think there is a systematic barrier that these groups face?

Colman: We know from history and the contemporary moment that there are barriers for these groups to move forward. Some efforts to ameliorate these have worked and some haven’t. There is also a systemic approach aspect, which makes it difficult because you have to look at how these things are institutionalized. We have moved forward on women and gender equity issues (things like tenure, providing opportunities for female faculty to get into the sciences, and grants for minorities). Institutions like Harvard have embraced these structural initiatives, but we also need to continue to educate the majority. We won’t, in the next 10 yrs, see a total demographic shift at institutions like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. The fact that there are institutions that are predominantly white and male, or however one defines the majority, means that we need to do determine how to educate that demographic about how to help eliminate these barriers. This is clearly a collective effort.

3. Are there are barriers to women ascending the ranks in the Harvard work force? If so what are they?

Coleman: There are definitely barriers for women. Harvard has put structural initiative into to place to help deal with the kinds of discrimination that has affected women, such as work-life balance (paternity issues, daycare etc.). I’m aware that there have been some past problems with women’s issues [we laugh as she alludes to the comments of former President Larry Summers]. But, when you look at Drew Faust and the make up of the faculty, we see that there has been progress, but we’re not done.

4. As CDO here, what do you most look forward to accomplishing? What obstacles do you anticipate?

Coleman: I’m super excited to be here! The great thing about Harvard is that they’ve been doing some tremendous work to engage the faculty and students. Cultural Rhythms, which Allan Counter put on, was amazing! There is some disconnect though, which leads to obstacles. The obstacle is in developing a communication system between all Harvard schools. How the medical school defines diversity is different from how FAS does. I look forward to working with the people at the different graduate schools here and to carving out a universal meaning of diversity. I love diversity work; it’s what I’ve been doing for 25 yrs!

5. Even though the faculty is roughly 25% female, which is a substantial increase from the past, why do you think there continues to be a disproportionate representation of women?

Coleman: Percentages are specific to different disciplines and areas. People are talking about a transformation of leadership everywhere, but there has been a lag. The transformation of the student population has proceeded much more rapidly than that of the faulty. There are, however, some areas that are growing faster and some that aren’t growing at all. In the medical sciences, women have entered at a disproportionate rate to where they were before. Veterinary medicine is 80% women! The real question is whether women be able to move to senior and administrative posts. This is where you see the glass ceiling.

7. What do you think explains the lack of women in leadership roles?

Coleman: Historically, men are often trained to be leaders—women are not. The transformation of the deanship at Harvard shows that this is changing. Also, women have historically focused on the balance between work and life more than men because of societal pressures. This is not to stereotype them, but to show that society does play a large role.

8. There seems to be a lack of discourse on diversity within the work force, but it is all too evident that there is a lack of diversity on campus. What plans does your office have to bring this issue to the forefront?

Coleman: We’re going to work with the offices that are responsible for the work force. This would include human resources. We will work with the specific units across the campuses to engage this issue. We want to see how our efforts affect the recruitment and the retention practices of women and minorities.

9. In general, what are your thoughts on the representation of women in leadership roles? Many argue that there is no longer a “glass ceiling,” do you agree with this?

Coleman: I think there is still a partial glass ceiling, but there is room for progress and progress has been made. We have to envision what senior and administrative posts look like. We must also consider how we’re ensuring that there’s gender equity and balance

10. From you previous work with diversity, how difficult would you say it is to achieve progress?

Coleman: It is tremendously difficulty to achieve parity (equality). Fortunately, I’m not look for that. The goal is how to engage the systematic barriers in education as best as we can. The great thing about higher education is that the promise of it is that we’ll be better tomorrow than we are today. We’ll be better educated, stronger, more engaged, better citizens of the world. Harvard is the number one institution and I think we can be number one in everything, including diversity. I’m an optimist [she says with a glowing smile]! We’re doing our best and putting our best foot forward.

By Ian Kumekawa

Earlier this month, in time for International Women’s Day, the Upper House of India’s parliament passed an historic and laudable bill that would guarantee women a third of all seats in national and state legislatures.  The proposal aims to correct some of the many profound gender disparities in the country, where, despite a history of strong female leaders like Indira and Sonia Gandhi, women have disproportionately low rates of representation, and high rates of illiteracy and poverty.

If the bill is passed by the Lower House, as is expected, the composition of the Indian government would change considerably. At present, only 59 women serve in the 545-member Lower House; with the one third reservation, that figure would be raised to at least 181 in the next election.

Introduced in 1996, the bill has met significant resistance for well over a decade. Indeed, this month’s passage in the Upper House was marked with protestors, disgruntled legislators, and a multi-party boycott of the vote. Yet, in the end, the measure passed with the support of India’s major parties.

Even the dissenting parties voiced their concerns, not with a system of quotas for women, merely with the specific quota in question, which makes no reservation for minorities currently benefitted by India’s complex system of legislative reservations. One dissenting leader, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was quick to clarify his party’s objections: “We are not against women reservation…Give reservation to poor India, to original India. The potential quota would likely reduce lower-caste and ethnic minority representation. The legislation would also affect Muslims, who make up a substantial part of the ruling Congress Party’s base and are expected to lose half of their seats in parliament if the new provision passes.

Nevertheless, Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, declared the bill “a momentous development in the long journey of empowering our women” and “living proof that the heart of Indian democracy is sound and is in the right place.”

The opposition to the reform suggests that if passed, the bill might merely transfer political power from one set of underrepresented groups to another: namely, women.  Yet there is convincing evidence that the quota will not significantly favor women of higher castes or majority ethnic groups. India has had a system of reservation for women at the local level since 1993 and analysis done by Harvard Kennedy School professor Rohini Pande and others shows that reservation for women simply does not benefit women of upper castes at the expense of other groups.

Still, though, the bill would likely have been less politically risky if it had provided for the creation of caste-based sub-quotas within the larger quota reserved for women. Quotas in India, after all, are older than the country itself and have been used for nearly a hundred years to bridge India’s plethora of ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious divides. In short, the quota system was both a way of promoting equality and a way of keeping groups invested – of performing a subtle balancing act that ensured the democratic stability of a remarkably diverse country.

Yet the new, proposed quotas for women are slightly different. Though they are intended to invest women in the political process, they make no mention of maintaining democratic stability. That is, the rationale for their institution speaks less to the logistical need to maintain a working government than it does to an ideal of an equitable and fair society. In effect, the government of India has committed itself to furthering equality.

If non-governmental social forces fail to bring about positive social change through existing democratic institutions, it falls to the government to be “the better angels of our nature”: to purposefully push social reality towards a more perfect and just imagining. In attempting to increase women’s participation in government, India’s government is remaining true to a commonly understood spirit of democracy, which is closely bound to equality.

In a global context, it is remarkable that the principal source of opposition to the Indian bill comes from parties anxious about the diminishing strength of their own quotas. When France introduced legislation in the late 1990s to provide for gender-equal representation (a system now known as parité), detractors made use of considerably less savory lines of argumentation, attacking a system of quotas as inherently unfair and undemocratic, even employing fairly offensive claims that women were, in general, less interested in entering politics, and therefore should not be guaranteed equal representation. Eventually, parité passed, though in a watered-down version. Surely India’s institutionalized system of quotas goes some way in explaining the relative dearth of French-style attacks , yet still, the absence is striking.

Quota systems are complicated animals boasting long lists of pros and cons. Yet in the case of India’s quota for women’s representation, a system of reservation seems to be clear a step in the right direction. In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked India 114^th out of 134 evaluated countries in a report on gender disparities. Such disparity is problematic in any country, especially a democracy, and India’s recognition of this inherent injustice and its recent attempt to correct it are to be lauded.

By Max Novendstern

Lawrence Lessig’s campaign to fix congress and save our democracy

In June 2007, Lawrence Lessig, the “Godfather of the Internet,” stunned his fans by giving up the defining cause of his career and announcing a second act: fixing Congress. There’s a “corruption of the political process,” he wrote on his blog, and for the next ten years he was devoting himself to fixing that corruption. “I [do not] believe I have a magic bullet,” he confessed. “Indeed, I am a beginner.” But to Lessig, the problem of congressional corruption is the “most important problem”: in it lies the key to saving our democracy.

Since Lessig’s announcement two years ago, our country has witnessed a bleak parade of Washington’s many dysfunctions. We’ve witnessed a massive collapse of our financial service sector, resulting, in part, from the systematic deregulation efforts of the 1990s. We’ve celebrated the resounding election of Barack Obama and subsequently watched him flounder. We’ve witnessed a health care reform bill gutted by insurance companies that now teeters on the verge of defeat. We’ve seen a Republican caucus use unprecedented procedural tactics to obstruct the proper functioning of the Senate. Then, Ted Kennedy’s seat was lost to a Republican and, a day latter, the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, overturning two decades of precedent in order to expand the reach of corporate America into our political process. Support for the Congress has collapsed. Fewer than 25 percent of Americans approve of its work; 58% rank the 111th Congress among the worst in our history. Critics have begun to call the body a “nihilistic institution” and America “ungovernable.” In a lengthy Atlantic cover story, James Fallows concluded that this is the “American tragedy of the early twenty-first century”: to have a “a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke.”

If he succeeds, history may deem Lawrence Lessig’s blog post prophetic. Writing before the financial collapse, the health care reform debates, or Citizens United, Lessig began what will be—if he succeeds at all—the largest reform movement of our lifetime.

Lessig first rose to national prominence as one of the nation’s most forceful advocates for the “free culture movement”— a movement based around freeing art and ideas from an outdated intellectual property regime. His books Code, The Future of Ideas, and Code V2 are considered to be founding documents of the cyberlaw discipline. As a constitutional law professor at Stanford, Lessig took the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act to the Supreme Court, lost, and then founded Creative Commons, a nonprofit that distributes licenses to writers and artists online, allowing them to override their own intellectual copyright entitlements, and free their ideas.

Lessig has achieved what one fan described as a “weird kind of celebrity.” He talks with a bookish monotone, and his lectures—which invariably go viral on the Internet—feature PowerPoint slides with black backgrounds and short phrases flashing across the screen., to a strangely compelling effect. Lessig embodies that rare and extremely admirable figure, the “professor activist” (close cousin of the “public intellectual”) who can leverage academic rigor beyond gates of the academy, who can take innovative research and use it to better the world.

Today, Lessig spends his time writing articles, making video lectures and organizing thousands of followers on his re-launched website, FixCongressFirst.org. In 2008, Lessig returned to Harvard as a law professor, founded Change Congress, his movement’s organizing center, and initiated the Institutional Corruption project here at Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics. The main focus of his efforts so far has been to rally support behind the Fair Elections Now Act, a bill introduced in the House by Democrat John Larson and Republican Walter Jones and in the Senate by Democrats Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter, which would institute a publicly financed campaign system. That bill is Lessig’s chief priority.

Lessig’s message is consistently simple and resounding: Congress is corrupted by money. The only way to fix Congress is to get the money out of the system. And if we do not fix Congress, then we cannot fix our country.

His organization, Change Congress, is propelled by an intellectual zeal rarely found in activist groups selling procedural reform. Since the Citizens United ruling, his movement has taken on a frenetic pace: thousands of letters have poured into the Change Congress office, and Lessig, who is nothing if not hard -working, seems to be churning out new articles, videos and emails daily. The entire scope of his efforts so far has been to drive home again and again that the best path to restoring faith in our democracy is to pass citizen-funded elections through the Fair Elections Now Act. Yet in the wake of Citizens United, Lessig has added a new goal to his agenda. According to Lessig, our country needs nothing less than a Second Constitutional Convention. He wrote on the Change Congress website on January 26: “We can’t build a movement to secure fundamental reform with the constant fear that an activist Supreme Court will strike that reform down. Instead, we must establish clearly and without question the power in Congress to preserve its own institutional independence. And we can only do that by effecting a change to our fundamental charter—an amendment to the Constitution.”

Following his campaign, you get the same sense that you got following Obama’s: that this is an impossible delusion (a Second Constitutional Convention! A black president!) that might actually work. You get the sense that he’s tapped into something fundamental, that, somehow, he’s aligned himself with history.

To understand Lessig’s case one must begin with a sobering admission: we are currently entering the fourth decade in which our country has failed to pass a single substantial policy reform or deal with a single one of our major national problems. One must begin by acknowledging that, from Reagan’s failed push to “roll back big government” to education reform to immigration reform to today’s health care debates, our country is less able to effectively solve our national problems than any other developed democracy. This is a tough fact to swallow, particularly for those of us proud of the achievements of American democracy. But it’s clear. Think of a problem—the declining middle class, or our energy economy, or the national debt, or the food industry—and ask yourself: why hasn’t this been solved? We have the solutions—we know what to do—but we’ve failed, again and again, to putting them into action in a meaningful way. Thus to understand Lessig one must first acknowledge the dispiriting reality that we’ve lost our ability to govern ourselves. That “our democracy,” in Lessig’s words, “is broken.”

To Lessig, it’s no mystery how we got to this point: in a word, money. Washington used to be a place to go to get power; now, it’s a place to go to get rich. Political scientists have found that, since the industry began in the1970s, lobbyist have been able to bring corporations and interest groups anywhere from 600% to 2000% returns on every dollar they invest. So we’ve seen a boom of lobbying. From 2000 to 2005 alone the lobbyist industry nearly doubled, to its current value of 2.1 billion dollars per year. And in parallel, Congress has “developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash.” The financial costs of getting elected have risen precipitously. Members of Congress now spend anywhere from 30% to 70% of their time raising funds for their own reelections. In 2008, the total cost of campaigns in this country was the highest in history, 5.3 billion dollars—more than five times what it was in the early 1980s, even after adjusting for inflation. This nexus of cash is what Lessig calls “the economy of influence.” Money passes from the hands of the interest groups to the lobbyists, from the lobbyists to the congressmen in the form of campaign donations, and, then, through legislation (pork barrel spending, earmarks, and “compromise”), money passes from the congressmen to the interest groups.

The effects of this profusion of money into Washington are manifold. Congressmen become dependent for reelection not on “the people”—as the framers promised us—but on those with the money. Legislation thus gets bent away from the public good. Laws that the public dislikes—the farm bills, the tax loopholes, the defense spending excesses—remain on the books, and the “easy cases,” like global warming, fail to be addressed. This is corruption, Lessig says. It’s not the money-in-a-paper-bag corruption of the old days, but a different, more pernicious kind. It’s a systematic perversion of the process, a bankruptcy of our governing institutions. The most telling and dangerous effect of money, thus, is the cumulative one on the credibility of the institution itself. Americans stop trusting their government. According to a recent poll, 88% of Americans believe (rightly or wrongly) that money buys votes in Congress. Because of money in our politics, the American people become cynical, they disengage, and our democracy becomes less responsive and more corrupt.

It’s not hard to see these dynamics at work today. Obama was swept into office on a tide of change and hope. His first year as president, however, has been characterized by the stark contrast between the enormous promise of the change—the promise of sweeping investments through stimulus, of climate-change reform, of financial re-regulation, of comprehensive health care reform—and the depressing reality: united and embittered opposition from Republicans, the relentless compromising and capitulating, and the angry distrust roiling around the country. The election of Scott Brown was a manifestation of this anger and disillusionment. So are the Tea Partiers. And so is the present state of the Democratic Caucus.

In this world of political despair, however, Lessig’s message is ultimately one of hope. His organization is based upon the premise that we need only enact a few bold procedural reforms—like citizen-funded elections and a Constitutional amendment—to make our country work again. But one wonders: is this true? Perhaps our problems are deeper. Has a culture of individualism undermined our ability to come together as a people and govern on behalf of the collective? Or perhaps our Constitution is simply too antiquated and too sclerotic to meet the demands of the modern world. Perhaps our present state is an indication of a broader failure of the American experiment in self-governance. To Lessig, the problem is money, only money. I’d like to think that he’s right.