Chiante Vidal is one of the 3,200 Boston youth who received jobs last year from the Boston Youth Fund (BYF), a government-funded youth employment program. Since last summer, she has been working for Girls’ LEAP, a women’s empowerment organization that trains at-risk girls in verbal and physical self-defense skills.

 “I’ve learned a lot of skills that I’ve needed in school,” Chiante says. “How to speak to other people, how to have empathy with other people’s problems and feelings. And also, leadership skills.” An additional benefit of having a job with Girls’ LEAP, Chiante notes, is safety. Many of her friends who do not have jobs end up hanging out after school—and hanging out, Chiante emphasizes, can lead to violence. “In the past 3 years,” she says, “I’ve lost a lot of friends to violence in the street… it’s a reality. It would be better if people had more things to do—more things than being in the street.”

Although some youth like Chiante, a student at Quincy High School, have found safety and diversion through youth jobs, many of her peers are less fortunate. And if her experience as an employed youth connected to important social and educational resources was rare when Chiante was first employed last summer, it will become even rarer this year. According to the Teen Jobs Coalition, Boston will lose 1,500 – 2,000 youth jobs this summer and Massachusetts will lose over 9,000 as a result of state and federal funding cuts. These cuts come at a time when the size of the youth population in Boston is the greatest it has been in the last decade.[i] Given the current research indicating that youth employment is linked both to adult employability and a reduction in youth violence, it is vital that the Massachusetts legislature pass amendments to the state budget in order to support the safety and future of Boston teens.

 Federal-, state- and city-level funding cuts will dramatically reduce the employment opportunities for youth this summer and the upcoming year. In March, the U.S. Senate rejected a proposal that would have committed $1.3 billion under the Workforce Investment Act to create up to 500,000 youth jobs. Of these, 11,000 would have gone to teens like Chiante in Massachusetts. The proposal would have renewed the $21 million of funding given to Massachusetts in 2009 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, $16 million of which was used to create 7,000 summer youth jobs. This year, without additional federal funding, the state’s youth will have to depend on the balance of the 2009 stimulus package, which is estimated to produce merely 2,000 youth jobs this summer.[ii]

            State funding for youth jobs will also in all likelihood be severely cut. Last year, state funding for youth jobs was reduced by 50%, and this year Governor Patrick has completely cut the major youth employment program, YouthWorks Jobs for Teens.[iii] The budget, currently in the state legislature, will not be finalized until this summer and may be subject to amendments that could restore funding to youth employment programs.

            City budget cuts will also result in fewer resources and jobs for Boston youth this summer. Mayor Menino has released plans to merge and close some community centers and will additionally close up to ten public library branches in the Boston area.[iv] Although the city will not be cutting funds allocated to youth jobs, it will continue to restrict the funding based on the age of youth workers, a measure implemented in 2003 to reduce the costs of funding youth employment and which will prevent youth who are not 13-17 years old from accessing important youth employment resources.

            As a result of funding cuts, roughly 8,500 Boston teens, 2,000 less than last year, will receive jobs this summer, of the estimated 14,000 who will apply.[v] The consequences of decreased youth employment in Boston will be felt acutely, especially among low-income communities where teens have fewer alternative summer activities or sources of income. People like Maria Dominguez Gray, deputy director of the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), are fearfully envisioning the consequences of the vastly reduced funding for youth jobs this year. “The last time this line item was cut [in 2000],” Dominguez Gray says of the youth jobs funding in the state budget, “there was an enormous spike in violence. One bad year can undo everything we’ve been doing for the last 10 years.”

            One concern that plagues all organizations and programs that work with youth is what happens to those they do not hire. Studies on the subject confirm their worst fears: there is ample evidence that youth unemployment can be detrimental to youth life outcomes and safety.

A key cause of chronic youth unemployment is the failure to develop the skills teens need to be productive adult workers in the modern economy. If teenagers do not develop skills during adolescence, they are even less likely to receive a job in an already difficult economic climate later in life. Unlike middle and upper class youth, who have access to more extracurricular and summer opportunities, low-income youth must gain the skills that ultimately determine their adult employability from youth employment programs. Furthermore, in the bigger picture, decreased youth employment can impact the economy as a whole, as high rates of youth unemployment ultimately translate into a less skilled and experienced adult workforce that is characterized by lower levels of productivity.[vi]

            But studies show that there is a much more immediate outcome of low youth employment. According to a report issued by a special committee on youth violent crime prevention within the Boston City Council, “There is an inverse correlation between the number of funded summer jobs and the number of shootings. Simply stated, there is a causal relationship between summer jobs and safer streets”[vii]  (see Graph).

Professor James Gilligan of Harvard University offers one interpretation of this correlation between youth unemployment and youth violence. “One of the costs people pay for the benefits associated with the belief in the ‘American Dream,’ the myth of equal opportunity, is an increased potential for violence,” Gilligan claims in his 2001 book, Preventing Violence. He calls attention to the “Horatio Alger” myth that “everyone can get rich if they are smart and work hard (which means that if they are not rich, they must be stupid or lazy, or both).”[viii] In a society that equates “self-worth with net worth,”[ix] he warns, unemployment becomes a form of shame and humiliation—it is the modern scarlet letter. Gilligan argues that to deny individuals work is to deprive them of the resources they need to develop a positive self-image. “Unless we provide people with access to the means by which they can develop and mature further, such as education and employment,” he points out, “we leave them with no means other than violence for protecting themselves from potentially overwhelming and intolerable feelings of shame.”[x]

            Other studies suggest that youth who are excluded from the working world will seek the social and economic capital they would have gained through employment by other means. Canadian sociologist Cherylynn Bassani, for example, claims that youth with deficits in social capital as a result of exclusion from the working world may even seek compensatory sources of social affirmation through gang membership.[xi]

            Although Gilligan and Bassani’s analyses are compelling, those who have worked with youth do not need to read academic studies to know that there is a strong link between youth unemployment and youth violence. Daniel Gelbtuch, who works with teenaged community organizers at Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, remarks, “Since the 90s, youth jobs have been cut and you definitely see a rise in youth violence with cuts. But then, there’s literally listening to every single teenager who walks in here and says that if his friends had more to do with unstructured time, they’d be participating in less violence.”

This year is only part of a larger trend toward higher youth unemployment in the United States. Whereas 60% of 16- to 24-year olds were employed in 1999, today, fewer than 48% have a job—the lowest level since World War II. Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, youth unemployment has reached 25.5%—the highest level since the Bureau began collecting data on youth employment in 1948.[xii] Current research shows us that this decrease in youth employment may have tragic consequences: not only will funding cuts decrease low-income teens’ employability in adulthood, but they may also subject them to greater levels of violence. Youth employment is not the only measure that can help ensure that young people in our community stay safe and can access resources necessary to attaining economic stability and self-fulfillment. Employment opportunities for ex-convicts, for example, must also be put on the legislative agenda. But the dramatic cuts in youth jobs funding requires immediate attention: legislators must push hard in the next few weeks for a budget that prioritizes the future and safety of Massachusetts’ teenagers.

[ii] http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/13/us_senate_rejects_extending_funding_for_youth_summer_jobs_program/

[iii] http://www.massafterschool.org/policy.html

[iv] http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/menino_floats_l.html

[v] http://www.lowellsun.com/business/ci_14935300

[vi] Fostering Youth Employment—Current Situations and Best Practices, eds. Alexander Schumann, Eric Thode, 7.

[vii] Report of the Special Committee on Youth Violent Crime Prevention

[viii] Gilligan, James. Preventing Violence. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001), 44.

[ix] Gilligan, 45.

[x] Gilligan, 80.

[xi] Bassani, C (2007) Five dimensions of social capital as they pertain to youth studies, Journal of Youth Studies, 10 (1): 30 as cited in Ross Deuchar, Gangs, Marginalised Youth and Social Capital (Staffordshire: Trentham Books Limited), xiii.

[xii] Ensuring Economic Opportunities for Young Americans, Hearing Before the Committee On Education and Labor. U.S. House of Representatives, 11^th Congress, First session, 2. <http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_house_hearings&docid=f:52413.pdf>

Obama Should Not Appoint Another Center-Left Justice

With remarkable speed, the shortlist of contenders for Justice John Paul Stevens’ seat on the Supreme Court has narrowed to just three: Solicitor General and Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge Merrick Garland, and 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and University of Chicago law professor Diane Wood. These are all fine candidates who are more than qualified for the Court. That said, they reflect a disappointing lack of imagination on the part of the administration. President Obama has a chance to appoint a true progressive to the Court, someone who would start reversing the sharp rightward turn it has taken since the 1970s. None of these three would fill that role.

First, Kagan and Garland hold distressingly conservative views on executive power and criminal law, respectively. Kagan’s views on the authority of the executive in a war on terror, in particular, are deeply troubling. She has said she believes that, under the law of war, it is acceptable for the government to treat the entire world as a battlefield.  The implication of this view – that persons anywhere and everywhere can be classified by the government as “enemy combatants” and treated as such – is as clear as it is disturbing. What’s more, Kagan defended a theory of presidential control over regulatory agency that, while distinct from the Bush administration’s “unitary executive theory,” comes much too close for comfort.  This view would endanger the autonomy of regulators under administrations hostile to their mission. The idea of giving right-wing presidents increased power to gut, say, environmental or work safety agencies, should give any progressive pause.

Garland has built a strong reputation among conservatives, earning much praise from very conservative judicial observers since Stevens’ retirement announcement. Curt Levey, the head of the conservative judicial lobbying group the Committee for Justice, has said a Garland nomination would lead to “if not a love fest, something close to it,” whereas a Kagan or Wood nomination would lead to a major fight. Ed Whelan, author of National Review’s Bench Memos blog and the leading conservative opponent of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination last summer, has called Garland “the best conservatives could reasonably hope for from a Democratic president.”

The praise is hardly undeserved. Having served as a criminal prosecutor in DC and in the Clinton Justice Department before his appeals court appointment, Garland has ruled consistently against the rights of defendants in criminal cases. This is made clear in his dissent from a DC Circuit Court panel’s reversal of two criminal convictions against an alleged crack dealer, charges for which only Garland believed the prosecution had sufficient evidence. He has argued that a criminal conviction can stand even if the prosecution has falsely claimed the defendant had prior convictions, and that a conviction can stand even if a judge wrongly denies the defense the right to cross-examine a key witness. While certainly a distinguished jurist, Garland’s views on criminal law are troubling.

Wood has no conservative streak to match those of Kagan or Garland, and is certainly the most progressive of the three. Her strong record on reproductive rights, as well as her demonstrated ability to win over right-leaning judges like Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, are both encouraging. But the fact that Wood is the leftmost contender on the shortlist is beyond discouraging. While certainly liberal by the standards of today’s Court, Wood, Kagan, and Garland are all fairly centrist when viewed in context of the Supreme Court in the recent past.

As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein has explained, while Justice Stevens is the most liberal justice on the Court now, he was actually at the Court’s center when he was appointed in 1975. What changed was not so much Stevens’ opinions as the Court itself. No justice as conservative as Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, or even John Roberts was on the Court in 1975, with the possible exception of William Rehnquist. What’s more, the three most liberal justices on the 1975 Court – Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, and Harry Blackmun – were considerably to the left of anyone on the Court now, and to Wood, Kagan, and Garland. For example, Blackmun argued that social services departments are constitutionally obligated to protect children from domestic violence.  Brennan and Marshall dissented from a decision upholding state restrictions on abortion funding, and also expressed their belief in a fundamental right to education. None of these views are represented on the current Court, and Wood, Kagan, and Garland certainly would not advance them.

Appointing a liberal in the mold of Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, or of yet earlier liberals like William O. Douglas, will not lead to these views’ adoption, of course. Opposition not just from the Court’s conservatives but also from moderate liberals like Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg eliminates any chance of this. But appointing a strident liberal would force the Court to entertain viewpoints it has ignored for more than a decade. It would ensure that when crafting a liberal majority, the rightward pull of Anthony Kennedy is balanced by a corresponding tug from the left, presumably with a more progressive outcome resulting. An old-style liberal would move the Court’s center leftward, whereas yet another moderate liberal appointee would make for, at best, a holding pattern.

There is no shortage of potential nominees along these lines. Stanford law professors Kathleen Sullivan and Pam Karlan, both noted advocates for LGBT rights, top most lists, and current State Department legal advisor and former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh would advance a similar vision. What is lacking is courage on the part of the administration to wage a real confirmation fight. Obama can choose to appoint a safe nominee, and give up the ability to change the Court’s character in the process. Or he can choose to make a difference, and begin reversing the Court’s long rightward slide. May he pick wisely.

Gender Disparities Across Harvard Concentrations

How do we interpret these data, and what, if anything, should Harvard do to change them?  These are challenging questions for a variety of reasons.  First, it is important to recognize that choosing a concentration is a multifaceted decision.  Incoming students must balance many factors when choosing a concentration, from their own intellectual interests to parents’ expectations to career prospects.  Yet the complexity of the situation does not excuse us from examining what role gender ratios may take in students’ decisions. And even if gender ratios do not always factor into students’ conscious choices about concentrations, they are still worthy of consideration.

Often, gender ratios across Harvard concentrations do not conform to common stereotypes about academic choices and gender.  As the abovementioned statistics demonstrate, imbalances are not confined to the frequently cited dearth of women in the sciences.  Though concentrators in the hard sciences as a group are 67% male, individual science concentrations represent a range of gender ratios: though many, such as computer science and physics, are indeed heavily male, others, such as chemistry and the various biology concentrations, are much more balanced.  One possible explanation is the increased presence of pre-med students, themselves a more gender-balanced group, in those latter concentrations.  Other science concentrations – for example, psychology, as noted above – actually have a higher percentage of female students.  Among non-science concentrations, gender ratios are equally varied.  For instance, in one humanities concentration, philosophy, 73% of concentrators are male, but in another, English, male students comprise only 38% of the total.  It is worth asking, then, why many people still perceive science concentrations as uniformly male-dominated, and humanities as the opposite.  Our stereotypes lag behind the changing reality of gender ratios, allowing their detrimental influence to persist.

If explanations that attribute these imbalances to stereotypical causes are insufficient, the question becomes how we can understand these issues more fully and deal with them in a productive manner.  I spoke to faculty in several departments about the way their concentrations understand gender ratios, and what steps they are taking to change them.  Both the level of awareness of gender discrepancies and the level of concern about them varies across departments. Professor Jeffrey Miron is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Economics department, where male concentrators outnumber females two to one.  He said that gender ratios are not usually a subject of discussion within the department.  While the economics department “is aware of the issue of mentoring,” he told me, they choose to focus on other issues.  Other professors – who, it should be noted, teach in departments with even more unbalanced gender ratios – place more emphasis on dealing with these imbalances.  David Malan, a Lecturer in the Computer Science department who teaches the popular course CS50, told me that his department has “made concerted efforts in CS50 in recent years to reach out to women on campus, particularly during lectures in shopping period, in hopes of painting a picture of Computer Science quite unlike what some might have experienced or perceived in high school or prior.” Professor Ned Hall, Head Tutor in the Philosophy department, also emphasized the importance of introductory classes, calling them a “crucial point” for recruiting female concentrators.  This commitment to active encouragement of prospective concentrators was shared by Professor Mahzarin Banaji, Head Tutor in the Psychology department.   She wrote to me in an e-mail, “When we are approached by male undergrads, we try to make the field attractive to them, and we even spend extra time advising them.”

Malan, Hall, and Banaji all point to important strategies for dealing with gender imbalances: encouraging students to take introductory classes, and also providing a strong advising network for students who do decide to concentrate in a field in which they are in the minority.  It is important to remember that incoming students have already established interests in particular concentrations; a gender imbalance among prospective concentrators in a department is not something created wholly at Harvard.  Malan emphasized this element in students’ choice to pursue computer science, saying, “I sense that the imbalance is more the result of factors that pre-date students’ arrival on campus” (e.g., their experiences in high school or their perceptions of the field).  Of course, though academic departments do not have the ability to affect the composition of the incoming class, they can use this information as a point of comparison.  Do students who express interest in a concentration then take introductory classes for it?  Do they then go on to concentrate in that field?  Comparison of these data, rather than the static data currently used, would supply much greater insight into how gender ratios are shaped throughout an individual’s experience at Harvard.  Professor Hall suggested the idea of focus groups among women who take introductory philosophy classes – a strategy that could provide a much more nuanced understanding of how gender affects concentration choice.

A better understanding of gender ratios across concentrations is important on this concrete level of data interpretation, but it also points to a larger and more fundamental concern.  Gender imbalances in academic fields have been the subject of much debate, both within and beyond Harvard. These debates provide an important context for understanding the role that stereotypes play in our understanding of gender ratios.  Even once we can interpret gender ratios in an insightful way, it is still difficult to explain why they exist in the first place.  As we know well at Harvard from the Larry Summers incident, it is dangerously convenient to rely upon existing stereotypes as a source of explanation, or to attribute disparities to some “innate” quality beyond human control.  Though Summers’ remarks garnered more attention than most, his attitudes are not unusual.  A recent New York Times article cited Helen Beebee, director of the British Philosophical Association, as saying that women are discouraged by the “culture of aggressive argument particular to philosophy.”  While such an environment may exist, and may indeed be discouraging, this type of argument again plays into existing stereotypes and misperceptions.  Moreover, it does not even do so consistently: as Professor Hall pointed out to me, other “argumentative” fields, such as law, have much more balanced gender ratios.  In any event, to use this stereotype as an explanation is to imply that women are passive and would have to change their “normal” patterns of behavior in order to fit into the existing culture of academic philosphy.  By implicitly accepting such stereotypes, it effectively places the blame for women’s underrepresentation on their failure to adapt to a male-dominated culture, rather than placing blame on the culture itself.

Ultimately, there is no ideal solution to gender imbalances in particular departments.  Recognizing the wide variety of factors that go into each student’s choice of concentration, it is unreasonable to prescribe a goal of perfect gender equality in every department.  What we can do is use the information we have in a more productive manner.   To understand these ratios more fully, it is important to consider not only the static differences among different concentrations, but also the dynamic change within a concentration, taking into account expressed interest and introductory class enrollment as well as final concentration choice.  Moreover, in attempts to explain why certain gender ratios exist, it is imperative not to fall back on existing stereotypes about men and women as a source of explanation.