Japan’s paradoxical migration policy

Published: 16 August 2024

TNaoto Higuchi
Waseda University


Nanako Inaba
Sophia University


Sachi Takaya
University of Tokyo

In Brief


The Japanese government passed an amendment to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in June 2024, with the primary goal of replacing the controversial Technical Intern Training Program with a new foreign worker program. But the updated law also includes more stringent controls on permanent residents, allowing authorities to revoke permanent resident status from individuals who repeatedly neglect tax or social insurance payments or who are convicted of certain crimes.


On 14 June 2024, a proposed amendment to Japan’s 1990 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (typically known as the Immigration Law) was passed through the House of Councillors with support from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)–Komeito coalition but also the opposition Japan Innovation Party and the Democratic Party For the People. The amendment’s primary aim was to abolish the controversial Technical Intern Training Program and establish a new labour recruitment initiative for foreign workers called the Training Work Program.

Since the enactment of the 1990 Immigration Law, Japan has recruited migrant workers through the ‘side door’. While the government officially denied accepting unskilled foreign labour, it allowed Nikkeijin — Japanese descendants — and technical interns to work as manual workers. They were officially regarded as ‘non-labour migrants’ visiting their Japanese families or engaged in vocational training.

It has taken 34 years to introduce a ‘front door’ migration policy that officially accepts unskilled migrant workers via the new Training Work Program. But the amendment to the Immigration Law also imposes stricter controls on permanent residency. Human rights advocates highlighted problems with the newly introduced Training Workers Program but did not strongly oppose it. They instead protested the new grounds for revocation of permanent resident status by organising daily sit-ins in front of the National Diet.

How should we understand these conflicting tendencies towards deregulation and the tightening of immigration restrictions?

It is essential to recognise that the LDP government is responsible for this somewhat conflicting series of policies. The LDP officially supported the pre-2019 anti-immigrant policy and opposed granting rights to migrants and refugees other than the highly skilled. It was only when Japan’s labour shortage became clear in the 2010s that the LDP began to take front-door immigration policies seriously. But far-right groups within the LDP were opposed to the idea of an ‘immigration policy’ that would pave the way for permanent residency for blue-collar workers.

In a Diet session on 29 October 2018, former prime minister Shinzo Abe remarked that ‘the government has no intention to promote a so-called immigration policy’. The Abe government was opposed to the idea of issuing green cards at the time of entry, underscoring the government’s restrictive stance on the permanent residency of migrants. But some far-right politicians opposed granting permanent resident status to blue-collar workers at all, even after the enactment of the 2018 Immigration Law.

In response, the cabinet included two new measures in the 2024 amendement. First, it established a three-stage meritocratic selection process for permanent residency — migrant workers must pass a first exam within the three-year Training Work Program, pass a second exam during a five-year program as Specified Skilled Workers 1 and may then apply for permanent residency after five years of work as Specified Skilled Workers 2.

Second, the new law enables the government to revoke permanent resident status from those who repeatedly fail to pay tax or social insurance premiums or who are sentenced to imprisonment for certain crimes. This is much more restrictive than in other East Asian industrial democracies. South Korea and Taiwan cancel the status of permanent residents only when they are sentenced to imprisonment for more than two years or one year, respectively, and neither of them revokes permanent residency because of delinquency on taxes and pension payments.

Many assumed that the government had hastily added this clause when the Immigration Law was revised in 2024, but the ruling LDP had in fact been considering restrictions on permanent resident status from the beginning. In 2022 a Cabinet document titled ‘Comprehensive Measures for Acceptance and Coexistence of Foreign Nationals’ suggested that ‘it is necessary to establish a legal framework to cope with permanent residents who no longer meet the criteria for their legal status’.

The government began preparing the new regulations two years before Specified Skilled Workers 1, who came to Japan under the 2019 immigration law, could be upgraded to Specified Skilled Workers 2 and gain access to permanent resident status.

This approach aligns with the LDP’s longstanding approach to foreign workers. An LDP Diet Member remarked — ‘When the number of permanent residents increases, we also need to tighten control of their status because not all of them are good people. As such, we clarified that the widening path to permanent residency accompanied the revocation of it’.

In this sense, tightening control over permanent residents was not an abrupt development. It should be regarded as an inevitable consequence of the front-door policy of the LDP administration.

Naoto Higuchi is Professor in the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University.

Nanako Inaba is Professor in the Faculty of Global Studies, Sophia University.

Sachi Takaya is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo.

https://doi.org/10.59425/eabc.1723802400

‘I Don’t Want to Be in This Forever.’

 Four Women Share Their Experiences in the Sex Trade | Op-Docs

 Aug 15, 2024

When the production team and I interviewed four women who worked in the sex trade in Wales for the film above, we were struck by the diversity of each interview: each revealing a different emotional state — whether it be loneliness, contempt or self-loathing.

Through a local organization, we connected with an outreach worker who supports vulnerable women. She was an essential link in making this film; her trust and love in the community made it possible for the women to open up to us.

To ensure the women felt comfortable sharing their often ignored stories without fear of judgment or compromised privacy, we chose to incorporate animation. Collaborating with illustrator and animator Ola Szmida was crucial. Her distinctive, stream-of-consciousness animation conveys the nuanced emotions and inner worlds of the women.

This film is about listening and understanding, seeing beyond the surface to the common threads that bind us all — resilience, loneliness, and the search for connection and purpose. We hope it fosters greater empathy and insight into lives that deserve to be understood and valued.

- Film and text by John Robert Lee (https://www.johnrobertlee.com/)

This 2024 Op-Doc is a shorter edition of the 2020 film "Not For Money, Not For Love, Not For Nothing."

DESANTISLAND

Heaps of books tossed in trash by Florida college - including many focusing on LGBTQ and race issues

Progressive state college has been at center of Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign against diversity and inclusion programs in higher ed

Josh Marcus
San Francisco
INDEPENDENT UK

Hundreds of books, including scores about LGBTQ+ issues, race and activism, were left in a dumpster and parking lot of a public Florida university on Thursday, angering members of the academic community.

Photos and videos show hundreds of books in dumpsters. The university claimed it was part of routine maintenance, but in the past students had the chance to purchase books being taken out of circulation.


The titlesin the trash included When I Knew, a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people, and Finding the Movement, about second-wave feminism, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

The scene comes as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s continues his campaign to change New College of Florida, a state college with a reputation for being progressive. DeSantis has also signed legisation that targets certain books in school libraries.

New College of Florida students, activists and alumni pick through discarded books from the school’s Gender and Diversity Center in Sarasota, Florida (via REUTERS)

Amy Reid, a faculty chair and representative to the board of trustees, told the paper she was blindsided by the mass disposal of books, and compared it to throwing away democracy. She said she wanted a period of mourning for the lost materials

“I want to do that for books, because books are what matter,” she said.

The books were disposed of about a week before most students arrive on campus for move-in day and the start of the fall semester.

A spokesperson for New College wrote in a statement that the books came from two separate processes: part of the regular maintenance of its collections and from the disposal of specific titles connected to a shuttered gender studies program that previously went unclaimed.

The school stated the books in the latter category were “later claimed by individuals planning to donate the books locally,” and disputed media reports framing the situation as a mass erasure of LGBTQ+ books.

Last August, following the appointment of scores of conservative trustees to the college’s board, New College abolished its gender studies program, thanks to a motion from board member Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who turned issues like purported “critical race theory” and “groomers” into central concerns of the GOP.

The college has also dismantled its office of diversity and equity, and must comply with a recently signed state law forbidding state-funded schools that “promote or engage in political or social activism” and offer courses “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.”

“It felt very much like New College was a little bubble in Florida,” environmental studies major Willem Aspinall, 19, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “Now it feels like that has kind of been burst.”

As governor, DeSantis backed laws ostensibly seeking to remove books from school libraries that contained “pornography and prohibited materials harmful to minors,” policies that often had the effect of targeting books on LGBTQ+ people, race, and other themes conservatives deemed objectionable or inappropriate for children.

Intel was once a Silicon Valley leader. How did it fall so far?

The semiconductor manufacturer announced huge job cuts and a dividend pause after losing out on AI.


by Ellen Ioanes

Aug 12, 2024
VOX


Visitors visit the booth of Intel at the 2023 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, November 1, 2023.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Ellen Ioanes covers breaking and general assignment news as the weekend reporter at Vox. She previously worked at Business Insider covering the military and global conflicts.


Intel stock is tumbling amid news that the company will lay off 15 percent of its staff after a steep decline in revenue and billions in losses in its chip foundry business.


It’s the largest drop for the company in half a century; at Friday’s closing bell, shares were trading at $21.48 — a price not seen since 2013.


The company is scrambling to shore up reserves by introducing layoffs and suspending stock dividends. But even those moves may not be enough to return the veteran tech company to its once-vaunted spot as an industry leader, especially in the face of heavy competition, particularly from rival chipmaker Nvidia.


Intel’s bad week really is more of a bad quarter: It started back in April, when the company revealed during an investor presentation that its chip manufacturing unit had, through a series of poor decisions, sustained $7 billion in losses in 2023, on top of a 31 percent decrease in revenue from 2022. Cost-cutting and other measures will save the company $10 billion in 2025, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger.


Semiconductor technology — which is crucial to everything from our phones to operating airplanes — was the foundation of Intel’s business when the company started in the 1960s. (Co-founder Gordon Moore was responsible for Moore’s Law, which theorized that semiconductor power would grow exponentially smaller, more powerful, and less expensive over time.) But as the company’s recent announcements indicate, Intel is no longer the innovative leader it once was.


There are also concerns about the global semiconductor industry — shares of other major chip companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung were down at closing on Friday, too, and industry leader Nvidia is reportedly facing an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. But Intel is in a particularly difficult position.

How did things get so bad for Intel?


This is not the first time the company has had to implement cost-cutting measures — Intel did mass layoffs back in October 2022, after a brief, Covid-powered bump in the company’s fortunes.


“In February ’22, they put out revenue targets that — I mean, I use the phrase outlandish, they were ridiculously high,” Stacy Rasgon, senior analyst at Bernstein Research, told Vox. “They were sizing the company and sizing the investments to that COVID level of revenue,” based on the need for technology that allowed people to work from home or for kids to attend school remotely — a business that collapsed nearly as quickly as it arose.


But the current CEO, Pat Gelsinger, inherited a business that was coming off a decade of stumbles when he started in 2021. “He came into a situation that they were dire straits; they had no competitive product to really bring to market,” while Jensen Huang’s Nvidia dominated the curve on AI tech, Daniel Newman, CEO of the Futurum Group, told Vox.

Intel’s other recent big bet has been its foundry business — three facilities in the US and three overseas to manufacture semiconductor chips, with other facilities in Asia and Latin America for testing and assembly. But that’s gotten a bumpy start; for instance, Intel declined to invest in cost-effective extreme ultraviolet machines for its manufacturing facilities, then had to outsource 30 percent of the manufacturing to a rival company, TSMC.

Intel is no longer ahead of the technological pack

“Historically, Intel has been the company that was pushing the leading edge,” Newman said. But in the lead-up to Gelsinger’s tenure, the company “missed the AI transition,” he said — and companies like Nvidia, AMD, and TSMC, which are manufacturing semiconductor chips that can be used to accelerate AI technology, filled the market.

Nvidia, in particular, has become a dominant force. As my colleague Nicole Narea explained, some of the technical capabilities of its earlier work in graphics cards for gaming translated well to the needs of generative AI. Starting in 2018, well before ChatGPT came on the scene, the company bet big on that possibility:



The company structured its research and development and mergers and acquisitions strategies to benefit from a coming AI boom.

“They were playing the game when nobody else was,” Newman said.


Intel is now trying to catch up with its Gaudi technology, but in the meantime, companies that used to use Intel products are shifting away from the company. Apple, for instance, switched from Intel processors to manufacturing their own processors in 2020 and reportedly relied on Google to build Apple Intelligence — Intel wasn’t even in the running.


Intel will survive (for now), on the money saved from the layoffs and dividend pause. Government subsidies from the CHIPs Act, and investments from hedge funds like Brookstone and Apollo, which have bought into the foundry business, will also help.


“I think they are a critical infrastructure company to the US and to the world,” Newman said. But getting back on track will depend on making sure the foundry business becomes profitable.


“Even if they’re number two, or number three behind Samsung, we still need it — this demand for AI change, nobody can go fast enough,” Newman told Vox.


But even if Intel can slot itself into that number two or three spot, there’s still the question of AI’s place in the tech sector and society — whether it needs to be more tightly regulated, or if it’s getting overhyped.


“In general for AI, people are just nervous that the numbers have gotten so big, so quickly, you just worry about sustainability,” Rasgon said.


For now, the silver lining of Intel’s current situation is that there’s nowhere to go but up.

The youth mental health crisis is hitting LGBTQ+ teens hardest

While better data is needed to understand just how wide the gap is, help doesn’t have to wait.


by Sam Delgado

Aug 14, 2024

VOX

People raise pride flags to support the book Gender Queer, a graphic novel about a nonbinary teen, at a school board meeting in 2022. H. Rick Bamman/Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images


Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report on their 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). The report includes data on a wide range of health-related behaviors of high school students in the United States, and breaks down these behaviors across different demographics. The results underscore the fact that we’re in the middle of a youth mental health crisis that has been steadily worsening for years — one that is particularly acute for LGBTQ+ youth.


According to the report, 41 percent of LGBTQ+ teens seriously considered suicide during the previous 12 months, 32 percent made a plan to do so, and 20 percent attempted to end their own life. By comparison, 13 percent of cisgender and heterosexual students seriously considered suicide, 11 percent made a plan, and 6 percent attempted suicide.


While LGBTQ+ representation and rights have improved in the last few decades, large swaths of queer and trans kids are still living in an environment that is deeply hostile to their very existence. There’s a long and ongoing conservative culture war that aims to reverse what progress has been made in recent years for the LGBTQ+ community, culminating in legislation and policies that harm LGBTQ+ youth, like restricting gender-affirming health care, forcing schools to out queer and trans students to their parents, and banning books that have LGBTQ+ content.


To understand how we can help bring down these stark mental health disparities for LGBTQ+ teens, it’s critical that we first look at the overall youth mental health crisis, and the unique challenge that LGBTQ+ teens are facing on top of it.

The state of youth mental health


It’s never been easy to be a teenager, but today’s youth are clearly facing a mental health crisis. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for teens in the United States. They’re more depressed and anxious. And it’s only been getting worse since the early 2010s.


For the 2023 report, which is conducted every other year, over 20,000 questionnaires were filled out by students from 155 schools across the US. The CDC researchers found that while some improvements have been made for youth health and well-being, largely all other mental health indicators worsened.

We shouldn’t overlook the small glimmers of hope, though. Hispanic youth who made a plan to kill themselves dropped from 19 percent in 2021 to 16 percent in 2023. And in that same time period, Black students who attempted suicide dropped from 14 percent to 10 percent.

Worried about a child or teen’s mental well-being? Here are some online resources to learn more about symptoms, treatment strategies, and how to help.
Effective Child Therapy is a resource from the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. The website has information on the emotional concerns, symptoms, and disorders that commonly impact teens (divorce, bullying, body image, anxiety, depression, and more) — and the evidence-based therapies that can help.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has information for parents on how to spot symptoms of mental health issues, and where to seek help.
The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds has educational articles on mental health issues, as well as many links for where to turn when searching for particular support groups, programs, and therapies.
The Crisis Text Line is a text messaging-based service for people enduring “any type of crisis.” And the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a phone-based service.
The Trevor Project is a crisis helpline for LGBTQ+ youth. It can be reached at 1-866-488-7386.

But for LGBTQ+ youth — which the report indicated had higher rates of suicidality than all other groups — there just isn’t enough comparable data yet to show a trend over time in the YRBS. 2015 was the first year that the CDC started measuring sexuality as a demographic, but it only included lesbian, gay, and bisexual as options to pick from. In 2021, they adjusted that to include students who were questioning their sexuality. Only this most recent report now includes transgender students. Because of these changes in measurement, it will take years for us to get a more accurate picture of how LGBTQ+ mental health is faring.


And while the report gives us a lot of helpful information, it doesn’t give us data for youth who hold multiple identities, like LGBTQ+ youth of color — who face unique challenges of their own.


“Queer youth of color, trans youth of color, are dealing with stigma tied to not just being queer and youth of color, but also the intersecting stigma of both,” said Allen Mallory, an assistant professor of human development at Ohio State University. Navigating the intersection of these identities can be stressors for LGBTQ+ teens of color, Mallory says.


There is no one singular force to blame for why teens are suffering from poor mental health and suicidal thoughts, but researchers have some hypotheses. A big debate in youth mental health is the use of social media and smartphones, with some researchers pointing to these digital tools as a major driver in worsening trends. But other experts argue that phones and social media are not the driving force behind declining mental health for youth — and have pointed out that for kids who lack connection in real life, finding community online is a real solace.

The developmental collision


It might seem surprising that LGBTQ+ youth mental health appears to be worsening even as the social atmosphere on LGBTQ+ rights has largely improved in recent decades. So why hasn’t that translated to improved mental health?


The apparent paradox may have an explanation. Broader acceptance of LGBTQ+ people has allowed for more visibility and for people to come out as queer or trans at younger ages. That means instead of coming out as a young adult or even later on, kids are coming out in early adolescence.


But that particular period of human development — being a teenager — is a heightened time of self-consciousness and peer regulation, especially for precisely those younger teens who are also in the process of coming out. Stephen Russell, a professor and director of University of Texas at Austin’s School of Human Ecology, calls this “developmental collision.”


“Kids are coming out right at this time that, developmentally, is the most they’re most attuned to regulating each other,” says Russell. For LGBTQ+ youth, this period of peer regulation can mean facing bullying and discrimination from their classmates on the basis of their sexuality or gender — a unique challenge that comes on top of typical teenage challenges. (Staying in the closet isn’t a solution, either. Kids deserve to be their authentic selves, not shamed into hiding.)


“The dynamic of coming out at a younger age in these times elicits and invites and creates the possibility for wonderful things, but also for stigma and other kinds of vulnerability,” he added.


Other bigger, structural and environmental issues play a part in this mental health crisis. From climate change to growing gun violence, finding safety and stability — crucial for mental and physical well-being — has taken a toll. The Covid-19 pandemic, in which over 200,000 kids under 18 lost a parent or caregiver as of 2022, can’t be ruled out either. And a culture war on “wokeness,” raised by conservative politicians and pundits, has aimed to reinvigorate animosity toward youth of color and LGBTQ+ teens.


To be clear, the fault is not on these teenagers for going through basic developmental periods, or for being LGBTQ+, or for struggling with big issues. What it does mean is that LGBTQ+ youth are facing unique challenges that must be recognized when creating and implementing interventions for their mental health.

How to help LGBTQ+ youth


The field of LGBTQ+ youth mental health is still evolving, and along with it, how to approach the subject from a clinical and public health perspective. But there are a lot of promising interventions to tackle this crisis.


From a more macro perspective, implementing practices that reach people in their day-to-day life is key. For teens, a big part of everyday life involves school. One simple (and almost painfully obvious) practice to start with is inclusive, enumerated policies for LGBTQ+ youth — basically, protection from bullying and discrimination.


“These policies we see at the state and school district level have really big implications for how LGBTQ youth experience school in their day to day life,” said Jessica Fish, an associate professor and the director of the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Health Research Group at University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.


Multiple studies have shown that LGBTQ+ students at schools with inclusive, enumerated policies experience less victimization and bullying — two things that can really impact a kid’s mental health. But according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank focused on equality and democracy, 53 percent of LGBTQ+ people live in a state with no law protecting LGBTQ+ students from bullying in school, and 42 percent live in a state with no law protecting these teens from discrimination.


If tackling state law feels too big, starting with an individual school community can work too. Take gender and sexuality alliances (GSAs, formerly known as gay-straight alliances). They’re student-led clubs that give LGBTQ+ and allied students a way to connect, support one another, and learn from each other. All of the public health experts I spoke to brought up GSAs — and there’s a lot of strong evidence that shows these groups can create a safer school climate and lower the risk of suicide and depression.


While researchers have a lot of good information on what’s working for improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth, there’s still a lot of room for more data. This is especially true when it comes to understanding what works for trans youth and LGBTQ+ youth of color.


It’s also important to note that while there is absolutely a mental health crisis for LGBTQ+ youth, many go on to become content, productive adults. It’s not their identity that sentences them to depression or suicide — it’s the stigma and discrimination they face in their homes, schools, and institutions, at a time when their age makes them deeply vulnerable and reliant on their surroundings.


There are many barriers to getting clinical help or implementing measures in schools. Understandably, that can feel like an uphill battle for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. But nothing is impossible, says Fish.


“These are things that will take mobilization, that will take a large degree of advocacy and grassroots support within the community,” she told me. “So I do think all of these are possible, but I think it’s just trying to figure out where the vantage point for change is.”

Sam Delgado is a Future Perfect fellow writing about labor and food systems, public health, and literacy.

Mpox never stopped spreading in Africa. Now it’s an international public health emergency. Again.

A first case outside of the continent has been detected in Sweden. What’s next?


by Jess Craig

Updated Aug 15, 2024

VOX

A patient with mpox in 1997 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. CDC/Image Point FR/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

A new and deadlier version of mpox is spreading internationally. In recent months, cases and deaths were being detected only in parts of central and east Africa, but on Thursday, Sweden confirmed its first case. The announcement comes just one day after the World Health Organization declared mpox an international public health emergency for the second time in two years.

The risk to the general public in the US is “very low,” the Department of Health and Human Services stated in the wake of the World Health Organization’s announcement.


Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is an infectious disease closely related to but much less severe than smallpox, and is suspected to originate in African rodents and non-human primates. Mpox spreads through close contact with an infected person, including from sexual and skin-to-skin-contact. Pregnant people can also pass the virus to their child during pregnancy and after birth. The most common symptom of mpox is a blister-like rash that typically lasts for two to four weeks. Other symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, cough, and sore throat.


For decades, mpox has caused sporadic cases and outbreaks in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and several other African countries. But in May 2022, countries outside of Africa, including many that had never dealt with mpox, suddenly started recording cases. That July, the World Health Organization declared the pandemic a public health emergency of international concern for the first time. In just one year, more than 100 countries had recorded nearly 90,000 mpox cases and over 150 deaths.


Fortunately, public health agencies around the world acted quickly to improve disease surveillance efforts, increasing awareness among high-risk populations, particularly men who have sex with men, and encouraging safe sex practices. In the US and Europe, where there were just over 30,000 and 25,000 mpox cases respectively between May 2022 and May 2023; officials also disseminated over a million vaccine doses. Consequently, mpox transmission in most countries quickly dwindled.

In May 2023, the World Health Organization lifted the emergency status and although at the time the public health body no longer considered mpox an international health emergency, countries around the world continued to report cases but much fewer than at the height of the epidemic. In June 2024, there were 175 cases reported across North, Central, and South America; 100 cases were reported in Europe, and 11 cases were reported in Southeast Asian countries, according to a situation report published by the World Health Organization.


In the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa; however, the outbreak continued largely unabated. As of May 2024, there have been 7,851 mpox cases and 384 deaths reported in the country. On Tuesday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention declared mpox a continent-wide public health emergency.


The version of the virus circulating in the DRC was different than the one that spread globally. There are two main strains of mpox: clade I, which causes more severe illness and has historically been confined to central Africa, and clade II, which has historically caused infections in west Africa. Clade II was the version that spread to over 100 countries in 2022 and 2023. But clade I was spreading in the DRC. And it is clade I that has now started spreading out of the DRC into four countries in east Africa — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda — and now Sweden.


Understanding mpox


Vox diligently covered the outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, back in 2022. Check out our previous work here:

One public health lesson from 2022 worth remembering

Monkeypox should have been easily controllable. How did we fail so badly?

Anal and oral sex spread monkeypox. Let’s talk about it.


The new international spread of mpox clade I is spurring concerns that a deadlier mpox pandemic might be on the horizon and triggered the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization to designate the ongoing mpox outbreaks as health emergencies.


Africa CDC is the public health agency of the African Union, which represents 55 African states. It is the first time the agency has designated any outbreak a continental emergency. Other African countries are also facing resurging mpox outbreaks caused by the clade II virus. In May, there were a total of 465 mpox cases documented across all African countries and in June there were 567, a 22 percent increase.


“We declare today this public health emergency of continental security to mobilize our institutions, our collective will, and our resources to act swiftly and decisively,” said Africa CDC Director General Jean Kaseya in a press briefing Tuesday.


Outbreak response efforts in the DRC and other African countries have once again been hamstrung by the same challenges health officials faced during previous outbreaks and pandemics, including Covid: a lack of global solidarity and an unwillingness to share life-saving resources. While vaccine doses were rapidly disseminated in the US and Europe in 2022, vaccines are only now starting to trickle into the DRC. But even so, only a couple hundred thousand vaccines will be available for a population of more than 100 million people.


Slowly, national governments and multinational organizations such as the African Union are working to improve domestic public health infrastructure and technical capacity and to reduce dependency on donor countries. While Africa CDC’s unprecedented move to designate the mpox outbreaks a regional health emergency signals a continuation of these efforts, it is unclear if the designation will help spur the rapid influx of resources needed to respond to the mpox outbreaks.

Mpox origins and unknowns


Mpox was first discovered in 1958 in a colony of monkeys in a research facility in Denmark, and the first case of mpox in a human — a nine-month-old infant — was not documented until 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Researchers and physicians could not determine exactly how the infant became infected; however, close contact with an infected monkey may have caused the infection. Small rodents, monkeys, and mammals can pass the virus on to humans but outbreaks typically take off when humans infect each other.


In 2005, additional mpox cases in humans were recorded in the DRC, and thousands of suspected cases have been reported every year since then. Since 2017, mpox has also caused frequent infections in Nigeria.



Although mpox has been around for a long time, there are still many unknowns about how the virus spreads and why it suddenly spread around the world in 2022. What researchers do know is that the virus has been rapidly mutating in recent years.


Interestingly and maybe worryingly, while most genetic mutations have no effect at all, some can cause viruses to become deadlier or more effective at spreading. When geneticists compared the 2022 mpox genome to a sample collected in 2017, they found some 40 genetic mutations had occurred. Some researchers have suggested that these mutations have improved how easily the virus can spread from person to person, but it seems that there is no firm consensus yet.


In September 2023, an entirely new mpox clade I variant, tentatively called clade IB, was discovered in the DRC. The World Health Organization has not confirmed if the new variant causes more severe disease or can be spread more easily.


Rosamund Lewis, the mpox technical lead at the World Health Organization, posits that genetic mutations are not behind the sudden global surge of mpox. Instead, she suggests that the virus happened to start infecting new populations — sex workers and men who have sex with men — and that has in turn fueled wider transmission. Mpox is reminiscent of the origins of HIV, when chimpanzees infected humans in southwestern Cameroon before taking firm root in the booming urban center — and among the large sex worker population — of Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC.


Sexual transmission among adults may only be one of the main drivers of mpox transmission. In the DRC, some 70 percent of mpox cases recorded this year were among children who were likely exposed through close contact with infected animals or household members who were infected.


One of the biggest risk factors for severe mpox infection and death is preexisting HIV infection. Unfortunately, about 25.6 million people in Africa have HIV, more than any other region in the world, meaning many African nations may experience deadlier outbreaks than other parts of the world. The dual burden of mpox and HIV was also a major factor that prompted the Africa CDC to declare the mpox outbreaks a continental emergency, Kaseya explained.

There is an mpox vaccine shortage. Will emergency designations help?


There are at least two vaccines — Jynneos, also called Imvanex in Europe, which is made by Danish company Bavarian Nordic, and LC16, which is manufactured by Japanese company KM Biologics — that are effective against mpox. The US Food and Drug Administration approved the Jynneos vaccine for use against smallpox and mpox in 2019. LC16 was developed for smallpox but is also effective against mpox.


When the US and Europe started recording mpox cases in 2022, health officials quickly disseminated millions of doses of existing vaccines. For the first two years of the pandemic, however, no vaccines were available in the DRC.


The DRC, like most countries in Africa, does not have the infrastructure to produce its own vaccines nor can it afford to pay for millions of doses. (The mpox vaccine costs just under $100 per dose, according to Kaseya; GDP per capita in the DRC is just $649.) Thus, these countries must rely on donations from the US, Europe, and other countries. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the Africa CDC started leading efforts to fill this crucial gap, but progress has been slow.


In the void, officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African countries have been carrying on their outbreak responses without vaccines. It wasn’t until last month that the first shipments of mpox vaccines started arriving in the DRC. But the country received only 200,000 doses, according to Lewis, forcing personnel to cobble together a plan outlining how they will utilize such finite resources. Kaseya did not elaborate on how Africa CDC will aid in this process.


Donor governments have been providing technical and financial support for mpox outbreak responses in Africa. Last week, the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, announced that it will surge $10 million in funds to support the mpox response in DRC.


It remains unclear if the new emergency designations will have any impact on mpox vaccine availability. Still, the Africa CDC and World Health Organization are increasing financial resources for the mpox response. Earlier this month, the African Union released $10.4 million in funds for the mpox response. The World Health Organization has promised $1.45 million in emergency funds, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, with more to follow in the coming days.


“This is a fight for all Africans and we will fight it together,” Kaseya said.


Update, August 15, 1:35 pm ET: This story was originally published on August 13 and has been updated multiple times, most recently to include a statement from the US’s CDC about the risk of mpox to Americans as well as the news of the first case outside of Africa in Sweden.

Jess Craig is a Future Perfect fellow covering global public health, science, and environment. Previously, she worked as an infectious diseases epidemiologist and global health security adviser supporting various US government agencies, multilateral organizations, and private research institutes.

 Australian breaker Rachael Gunn says ridicule of her Olympic performance has been 'devastating'

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian breaker Rachael Gunn said the backlash to her much-ridiculed Olympic performance has been “devastating,” adding Thursday that she took the competition seriously and gave her best effort.

Australia's Rachael Gunn, known as B-Girl Raygun, competes during the Round Robin Battle at the breaking competition at La Concorde Urban Park at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 9, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin)

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian breaker Rachael Gunn said the backlash to her much-ridiculed Olympic performance has been “devastating,” adding Thursday that she took the competition seriously and gave her best effort.

The 36-year-old b-girl known as Raygun said in a video posted to social media that she wasn’t prepared for the level of negative attention she has received since judges awarded her zero points in her Olympic debut. Meanwhile, the Australian Olympic Committee criticized an anonymous online petition attacking the Paris Games competitor, saying it was “vexatious, misleading and bullying.”

“I didn’t realize that that would also open the door to so much hate, which has, frankly, been pretty devastating,” Gunn said. “But I went out there and I had fun. I did take it very seriously. I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and I gave my all, truly.”

The sport of breaking made its Olympic debut in Paris, and one of the lasting images was the performance of Gunn, a 36-year-old university professor from Sydney — who did a “kangaroo dance” among other questionable moves during her routine — and did not receive a single point from any of the nine judges in either round.

Gunn was subsequently mocked for her efforts, including a parody on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in the United States. In the video, she said she was subjected to abuse that went beyond criticism of her dance moves.

“I’d really like to ask the press to please stop harassing my family, my friends, the Australian breaking community and the broader street dance community," she said. "Everyone has been through a lot as a result of this. So I ask you to please respect their privacy.”

Gunn, who has not yet returned to Australia, received strong support from Australian Olympic team leader Anna Meares while in Paris. On Thursday, the AOC went a step further, taking aim at what it called erroneous material published online.

Chief executive officer Matt Carroll said the the AOC had written to Change.org, which had published a petition criticizing Gunn and the AOC, demanding that it be withdrawn.

More than 40,000 people had signed the petition claiming Gunn had “manipulated” Olympic qualification processes.

Change.org said in a statement Thursday that it removed the petition after flagging it for misinformation.

“Change.org maintains strict guidelines against content that constitutes harassment, bullying, or spreading false information,” the statement said. “We take such matters seriously and remove any content that violates these standards to protect our users and uphold the integrity of our community.”

Carroll said the petition “contained numerous falsehoods designed to engender hatred against an athlete who was selected in the Australian Olympic team through a transparent and independent qualification event and nomination process.”

“It is disgraceful that these falsehoods concocted by an anonymous person can be published in this way," Carroll said. “It amounts to bullying and harassment and is defamatory. We are demanding that it be removed from the site immediately. No athlete who has represented their country at the Olympic Games should be treated in this way.”

Breaking at the Olympics might have been one-and-done in Paris. The sport is not on the competition list for Los Angeles in 2028, and also is unlikely to appear in 2032 at Brisbane, Australia.

Online criticism of Gunn this past week has included suggestions that the Oceania qualifying event held in Sydney last October was set up to favor her, and questioned the judging that allowed Gunn to qualify.

The AOC said Thursday the Oceania qualifying event was conducted under the Olympic qualification system determined by the international governing body, the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), and approved by International Olympic Committee.

It said the judging panel for the event was selected by the WDSF and consisted of nine independent international judges.

Unattributed social media comments also suggested Gunn and her husband, fellow breaker Samuel Free, had held positions within Australian breaking organizations.

“Rachael Gunn holds no position with AUSBreaking or DanceSport Australia in any capacity,” the AOC said Thursday. “She is simply an athlete who competed in the qualifying event which she won.”

___

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

The Associated Press

How Raygun earned her spot — fair and square — as an Olympics breaker

The truth behind the ongoing controversy over the highly memeable dancer.


by Aja Romano

Aug 14, 2024,

VOX

B-girl Raygun of Team Australia competes during the b-girls’ round robin at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. 

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

In October 2023, members of the World DanceSport Federation, or WDSF, learned breaking, the sport they’d been trying to make happen at the Olympics for years, would not be appearing at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

In response, the organization’s president, Shawn Tay, made a grand proclamation. “Ensuring the success of breaking’s Olympic debut at Paris 2024 is therefore on the forefront of the WDSF agenda,” he said. “Our performance in Paris will define the future of dance sport within the Olympic Movement.”


…Oops?


Going into the games, breaking had a lot riding on its shoulders. But no one counted on Raygun — the newly infamous, 36-year-old, last-place Australian b-girl (as breakers are called) whose performance on the Paris stage included bizarre floor-writhing, awkward freezes, and “original” moves like kangaroo hops.

my five year old niece after she says “watch this!” : pic.twitter.com/KBAMSkgltj— alex (@alex_abads) August 9, 2024


Raygu, real name Rachael Gunn, instantly became a viral sensation — notoriety that only skyrocketed when the public learned that Gunn, who won none of her Olympics battles, actually has a PhD in breakdancing. Yes, really. Gunn’s performance has not only overshadowed the two actual breaking gold medalists, Japan’s Yuasa Ami and Canada’s Phil Wizard (plus 16-year-old Australian b-boy Jeff Dunne), it’s arguably become the defining moment of a Parisian Games marked by controversy and absurdity.


But alongside widespread mockery of Gunn herself runs speculation that Gunn’s presence at the Games had to be some sort of mistake, even corruption. Surely, this couldn’t be the best Australia had to offer? How did Raygun wind up at the Olympics when, for example, last weekend in Melbourne a couple of b-girls were serving these moves?

To answer this question, we have to go on a bit of a deep dive — so let’s (sorry) hop on in.

Reports Raygun manipulated her way into the Olympics couldn’t be further from the truth…

For decades, the WDSF was devoted to ballroom dancing. The association started in the late ’90s with a focus on winning a place in the Olympics for ballroom dancing before its subsequent pivot, around 2017, toward breaking. A quizzical backstory, yes — but it doesn’t make the organization less legitimate. Te Hiiritanga Wepiha, a.k.a. Rush, one of the judges in the women’s breaking final for the Oceania championship Gunn won, posted a 90-minute livestreamed Instagram commentary on Tuesday in response to the controversy. He pointed out that the WDSF judging system, used in the Olympics and its breaking qualifiers, requires judges to be veterans in the breaking scene, both as competitors and as judges, as well as to pass multiple exams. “You have to be trained to be a judge,” he insisted.

This wasn’t Gunn’s first rodeo either. Prior to her Olympics appearance, she represented Australia at multiple World Championship competitions between 2021 and 2023. She judged Red Bull’s preeminent BC One breaking contest. She’s an established local champ.

Yet following Gunn’s appearance at the Olympics, a petition circulated claiming, without sources, that Gunn and her husband, breaking coach Samuel Free, had manipulated the entire WDSF system in order to gain a spot at the Olympics. The petition falsely claimed Gunn had judged herself at the qualifying Oceania championship competition — despite the judges’ list for the event being readily available on the WDSF website.

Other rumors further alleged, again without any apparent sourcing, that Gunn and her husband were the masterminds behind the Australian Breaking Association, better known as AUSBreaking — another easily debunked claim. An AUSBreaking spokesperson further confirmed to Vox in an email that Gunn and her husband did not found the organization. Gunn doesn’t appear to be directly responsible for managing, or funding, any breaking group, which likely also negates the petition’s claim that she denied travel funding to a marginalized dance crew from Australia’s Northern Territory.

…But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to understand how she got there


The subtext of this criticism — that Gunn benefited from her whiteness — has merit. Gunn was educated at one of Sydney’s most elite high schools; she had the opportunity to get a PhD in an obscure field, and the wealth to fund appearances at international breaking competitions. Her white privilege in a dance scene rife with cultural appropriation makes her an easy target for criticism. At the same time, some have tried to argue she represents exactly the opposite — a “diversity hire” and Australian “wokeness” gone wrong. “People have jumped on and used her as the new scapegoat to further their cause,” Wepiha observed in his livestream.


“We never thought this would happen,” he told me. “She’s getting torn down by a lot of people.”



Still, while the rest of the world has put Gunn through the ringer since her Paris appearance, the actual breaking community seems to have rallied behind her.


“This is what happens when people outside of our dance want to control the narrative but have absolutely no expertise of technical knowledge on our dance, particularly in an Oceania context,” Dujon Cullingford, a veteran New Zealand breaker who attended the Oceania qualifiers, told me. Cullingford wrote a Facebook post arguing against the idea Gunn benefited from any factor besides a small talent pool.


He emphasized that Oceania’s breaking community is tiny; one of Gunn’s own articles placed the number of Australian breakers at around 400, total, and Wepiha claimed the WDSF had to “get people out of retirement in order to make up the numbers” of competitors. One of the main criticisms being bandied about concerns a public perception that the WDSF must not have been promoting their events among “real” breaking scenes, but rather elitist communities like universities. But both Cullingford and Wepiha rejected this idea. “It’s very easy to know if there’s a jam on because the scene is tiny,” Wepiha said.


“Down here, like other countries, we feel the squeeze of cost of living, and the breaking scene is small so it doesn’t produce a lot of people who have time to teach, lead crews, and mobilize the community in the same way,” Cullingford said.


He noted that, further diminishing the small talent pool, many breakers chose not to compete in the Olympics qualifiers because they didn’t want to shell out the cash needed to travel to the competition in Sydney last November. Additionally, many breakers simply had no interest in participating due to the feeling that the efforts of the establishment to rope breaking into the rigid organizational structure of the Games was antithetical to street dance culture. According to Wepiha, many dancers felt informal jams are more expressive with less strict judging — the kind of breaking they want to do, as opposed to Olympic-level battling.


And then there was Raygun.


“She rocked up like everybody else,” Wepiha said in his livestream regarding Gunn’s Oceania qualifier. “She won fair and square.” He pointed out that of the 10 judges at the event, only one was white and none were Australian — a fact AUSBreaking also confirmed to Vox. “She won by majority decision, she battled like everyone else … it’s not that deep.”

You can judge for yourself: in the Oceania Championships Raygun won which secured her spot in the Olympics, she netted 51 overall points to 50 scored by her opponent Holy Molly (Molly Chapman). The crucial final points came in this battle when the pair faced off, with Raygun winning two of three rounds.

Australian Breakdancer Raygun Addresses “DEVASTATING” Hate & Olympic Conspiracy Theories | E! News

E! News

 Aug 15, 2024  #olympics #raygun #enews

Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn, known by her B-Girl name Raygun, is speaking out addressing the "devastating" online hate she's received following her viral 2024 Paris Olympics performance.

Since Gunn became a viral sensation, many people have watched this battle and claimed that Molly was the clear winner, but it’s not so simple. For one thing, these judges had seen their overall performances throughout the competition. If Molly was recycling moves from previous battles while Raygun kept things unique, the judges probably would have favored Raygun. Other factors to keep in mind include things like who was more on beat, which dancer spent more time on floor moves as opposed to the transitional dance moves called toprock, whose movements were stronger and more fluid, whose moves were crisper and more precise, and whose transitions were more interesting.

Prior to this, both Chapman and Gunn competed in the World Championships in Belgium in September 2023. While neither of them qualified then, out of 80 competitors, Gunn ranked 64th — a full 15 slots ahead of Chapman, who came in next to last.


All of this means, despite the viral narrative that’s attached to her, it isn’t as simple as writing Gunn’s Olympics entrance off as a hilarious fluke or a mark of privileged corruption. Indeed, according to Gunn, she intended to bring a style of movement to the Paris Games that was less about meeting expectations and more about making an indelible impact.


“What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative — that’s my strength, my creativity,” Gunn told ESPN.


“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get … in a lifetime to do that.”

Score by score, Raygun’s dancing isn’t actually that bad. Really.


Gunn has been reflecting on what her style is for some time. In one of her academic articles on breaking, she argues, “Gender norms both articulate and limit my corporeal potential.” Gunn has also written about what she sees as the dance’s “normative construction” of masculinity.


In other words, the weirdness of Gunn’s dance … might be the whole point. Moreover, in more informal breaking venues, it’s not even that weird. “What Raygun showcased at the Olympics is that breaking is a spectrum,” Wepiha said in his livestream. He argued her style represents that more informal, self-expressive side of street dance. “She went up there and did what a lot of you complaining could never do. She was her authentic self.”


You may well ask: But don’t we have to hold Olympians to a higher standard of excellence? Even if that excellence is forged from a masculinist construction of athleticism and dance?


Well… do we? There’s every indication Gunn is currently the most famous b-girl in the world, and while most people are laughing at her, not with her, somewhere in the wide vast world of breaking, other b-girls may feel inspired rather than shamed and mortified.



After all, even by the Olympic standards, Gunn didn’t do that badly. If you look at the judges’ scoring, for example, of her battle with US breaker Logistx, you can see that while she nabbed zero rounds, a handful of judges had her beating Logistx in some subcategories, usually originality. Meanwhile, while Logistx won most categories, she typically only won by a few percentage points at best.


In other words, Gunn arguably held her own at the Olympics under a once-in-a-lifetime amount of pressure, and she did it while trying out her own unique style.


Was it great? No. Was it bad? Evidently not as bad as we thought.


The ambiguity leaves us with a mess; many (though certainly not all) of the people heaping criticism upon Gunn are people who barely knew what breaking was a fortnight ago, while many of the people rushing to defend her are breaking veterans. In between are the people who just want to meme. The situation has some Australian breakers worried the backlash will drive away sponsors and support — which, Wepiha told me, was already a concern given the lack of government funding for breaking as an art form.


As for Gunn, “Above all she’s a human being,” Wepiha said. “We first and foremost just hope that she’s all right.”


Yet if there’s one thing we know about breaking, it’s that it takes a lot more than ridicule to, well, break it.

Aja Romano Aja writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.

Where Columbia’s ousted president went wrong

And how university campuses can do better this fall.


by Nicole Nare

Aug 15, 2024
VOX

Alumni of Columbia Law School hold a pro-Palestinian protest during their graduation ceremony in New York, on May 13, 2024. Fatih Akta/Anadolu via Getty Im


Nicole Narea covers politics and society for Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic.


Columbia University president Minouche Shafik is stepping down after protests over the war in Gaza roiled the university community and spread to campuses nationwide, and in Europe, last spring.


“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in a letter announcing her resignation Wednesday. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”


Shafik has faced pressure to resign for months. Both those who supported the spring protests and those who opposed them have criticized how Shafik handled the demonstrations, as did a number of right-wing politicians, who claimed the president failed to do enough to protect Jewish students. House Speaker Mike Johnson called her resignation “long overdue” on Wednesday.


Not all of the spring protests — which largely involved students demanding that their schools divest from companies linked to Israel amid its ongoing war in Gaza — reached the intensity of those at Columbia. Some schools managed to negotiate with protesters to voluntarily dismantle their pro-Palestinian encampments without any police intervention.


At Columbia, however, Shafik swiftly called the police on protesters who had erected an encampment on the university’s main lawn in a display of force that sparked widespread outrage. That decision fueled protests with more escalatory tactics thereafter, and also resulted in a faculty vote of no confidence in her leadership. Things progressed to the point where some protesters eventually took over a campus building before they were forcibly removed by police and arrested.


Now, Shafik has become one of several Ivy League presidents who departed their roles amid the campus furor. The question is not just where that leaves Columbia — now headed by interim president Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center — but all universities as students return to campus this fall. Demonstrations are expected to resume as the war in Gaza, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, continues and yet another round of ceasefire talks has begun. And it will be incumbent on administrators to find a way to avoid a repeat of the spring.


“I think tensions are going to be high, higher than I think they already were,” said Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan group that advocates for free speech. “Hopefully policies are in place and discussions are happening with students and faculty surrounding how to respond in case encampments go up or students are being threatened or denied access to different portions of campus.”

Gaza protests could return in the fall. Universities should start preparing now.


There are two key lessons other university administrators might take away from Shafik’s missteps ahead of what is expected to be a contentious semester:

Universities should communicate openly and clearly with protesters


In the spring, protests escalated to the point that normal university operations couldn’t continue.


Columbia held virtual classes in the final weeks of the spring semester. UCLA also canceled classes after pro-Palestinian protesters came under attack by masked agitators and campus police failed to intervene for three hours. USC scrapped a commencement speech by its pro-Palestinian valedictorian over safety concerns.


Universities should be planning now for how they can prevent that from happening again. If protests escalate this fall to the level of requiring the invention of campus public safety or police, then “something’s already gone terribly wrong,” said Frederick Lawrence, the former president of Brandeis University and a lecturer at Georgetown Law.


The most important step schools can take now is to set clear ground rules for protests that will be applied neutrally — no matter who’s involved or what their cause — such as prohibiting occupying buildings or blocking students from getting to class.


Ahead of the fall semester, Lawrence said, university administrators and protesters should plan for a reset that begins with communication.


“This is a good time to be reaching out to student leaders on all sides of this and other related issues, and listening to them, but also trying to bring them on board, to try to find constructive ways of having demonstrations, having expressions of views, but doing it in a way that’s constructive for them and constructive for the university,” Lawrence said.

Universities have to carefully consider when to weigh in


University administrators have dual responsibilities to uphold free speech and keep their community safe. Their ability to carry out those responsibilities is compromised when they aren’t seen as neutral mediators.


Some university administrators learned this the hard way earlier this year when their statements about the Gaza war were copiously picked apart in the media and in widely publicized congressional hearings — as well as on their own campuses, as some student protesters at Stanford occupied the offices of their college president.


In the spring, some universities did decide that it is not the role of a university to take stances on issues at an institutional level. Harvard, for instance, announced that it would no longer comment on contentious issues that do not directly relate to the university. That change in policy came after former Harvard president Claudine Gay was heavily criticized for her initial statement on the war. The beleaguered Gay resigned after facing a later plagiarism scandal.


Perrino framed Harvard’s approach as a positive development.


“That should hopefully alleviate some of the messaging concerns around these colleges,” he said. “Universities are the hosts and sponsors of critics. They are not themselves the critics, and by becoming the critics, they put their thumb on the scale of the campus debate.”


Rather than issuing blanket statements, there may be a more nuanced role for educators to play, by discouraging certain kinds of speech, even if it is permitted under university rules. For example, Yale president Peter Salovey stated in the spring that “Chants or messages that express hatred, celebrate the killing of civilians, or contain calls for genocide of any group are utterly against our ideals and certainly are not characteristic of our broader community.”


Those kinds of warnings can have the effect of lowering the temperature.


“A lot of things get said in the heat of the moment that are not helpful, and it is useful for the administration to deescalate and to say, ‘You can communicate that in a way that’s not deeply offensive to your classmates,’” Lawrence said.