Donald Trump – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu The official news site for Fordham University. Thu, 26 Sep 2024 20:02:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://now.fordham.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/favicon.png Donald Trump – Fordham Now https://now.fordham.edu 32 32 232360065 Do Polls Really Matter? https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/do-polls-really-matter/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 16:02:32 +0000 https://now.fordham.edu/?p=194983 In the home stretch of the 2024 presidential election, a new poll dominates the headlines almost every day. But one thing remains consistent: It looks like an extremely tight race.

But just how much do polls really matter?

We asked Fordham’s resident expert, Monika McDermott, Ph.D., a professor of political science who studies voting behavior, political psychology, and public opinion. She has been an election night analyst for CBS News since 2002 and works as a campaign and polling consultant in the U.S. and abroad. 

“Whether polling matters depends on the purpose for which people intend to use it,” she said. “For campaigns, political polling is extremely valuable in formulating messaging and determining weaknesses and strengths of the candidate.”

McDermott explained that some things pollsters ask about—such as issues and priorities—provide great insight into the race. But most media outlets choose to ignore those questions in favor of the electoral horse race: which candidate is ahead and by how many points. “For that purpose, polls aren’t great,” she said. 

How accurate are polls at predicting who will win?

Polls only provide a snapshot in time. The numbers are only good at the moment they’re measured. As we say in polling and elections, the only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. 

How do pollsters decide who to poll?

Polls used to be done using random samples of telephone numbers. Since the advent of cell phones, things have changed. Now, many polls are based on volunteer opt-in panels of respondents. So they only measure the opinions of people who have chosen to be included. This means that while polling can still approximate a “representative” sample of Americans, most polling no longer relies on the original statistical assumptions behind random sampling. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t good and useful, but it is a different animal.

How much do poll results influence campaign strategy?

In my experience, polling is extremely valuable in determining issue priorities and messaging for the candidate to best persuade the voters they need on their side. They can also point out weaknesses in an opponent’s campaigning and positions, which is also useful.

What are the gold standard surveys?

In my personal opinion, the most reliable surveys come from organizations that are trying to recruit their respondent pool based on random sampling. It’s a blend of old and new methods and avoids the purely opt-in effect. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which does polling for the Associated Press, among other organizations, does this, and they are the closest to the pure science of sampling.

Campaign polls that use registered voter lists are actually also reliable, as they want to talk only to voters. Media organizations don’t do this because they frequently would rather be able to talk about the American public at large.

Why were the polls so wrong in 2016?

2016 was not the polling disaster that people like to think it was. The national polls were dead-on. [Hillary] Clinton won the popular vote (by a point or two, which was the prediction), which is all that national polls are designed to measure. They are not representative of the electoral college vote and that’s what decides the election.

The problem in 2016 came from estimates from state polls. State polls are notoriously hard to do. Only experts in that region know the ins and outs that are special to that state’s politics and electorates.

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With J.D. Vance Pick, Trump Signals Commitment to His Base https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/with-j-d-vance-pick-trump-signals-commitment-to-his-base/ Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:28:49 +0000 https://now.fordham.edu/?p=192574 Less than three days after surviving an attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump announced that J.D. Vance, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, would be his running mate for the 2024 presidential election.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump said in a post on Monday on his Truth Social network.

Hours later, Vance and Trump—who had a large bandage on his right ear after Saturday’s shooting—shook hands and sat next to each other during the Republican National Convention’s opening night program in Milwaukee.

Vance, age 39, who rocketed to fame as the author of the book (and ensuing movie) Hillbilly Elegy (Harper, 2016), is the third-youngest person nominated for vice president by a major party. A former critic of Trump who once privately compared him to Hitler, Vance now aligns with the former president on several key issues. He echoed Trump’s calls to cut aid to Ukraine, deport migrants, and increase tariffs on all imported goods. 

Doubling Down on MAGA

Fordham experts said the pick is a bit unusual given Vance’s past criticism of Trump and the fact that he doesn’t bring “something different” to the ticket. Though it’s not surprising, they said, that Trump would aim to reinforce his brand of conservatism.

“Vance is very much a choice that underlines what Trump has been doing since the 2020 election, which is doubling down on the concept of MAGA as a replacement of traditional conservatism,” said Boris Heersink, Ph.D., associate professor of political science.

“Historically, it has been common for presidential candidates to try to balance the ticket in terms of intraparty disagreements. Clearly, this choice isn’t doing that.”

Jacob Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science, agrees that in Vance, Trump has chosen someone similar to himself—both in experience and policy.

“Like Trump, Vance is famous for something outside of politics and has little experience in elective office,” he said. “Sometimes, campaigns try to choose someone who adds something different, although other times, such as the Clinton/Gore campaign of 1992, a campaign will double down on a particular strength or message,” he said.

Help in Ohio?

Heersink has done research on the effect vice-presidential candidates have on elections, specifically within their home states. He said that while Vance may deliver Ohio votes, that is unlikely to have a big impact.

“Ohio has drifted so far to the Republican side that it is basically a guaranteed win for Trump regardless of who his running mate is, and additionally, Vance underperformed in Ohio in 2022 in comparison to Trump in 2020.”

Smith said Vance could perhaps “help a little bit in the Midwest, if he ends up being a strong choice, but research shows VP effects are minimal even in home states, much less regions.” He noted that a one or two-point additional performance in Ohio “could be important down-ballot though” for Ohio’s upcoming Senate and House contests.

Rhetoric Could Ramp Up

One area where Vance is expected to play a significant role is in the tone of the campaign, and there, Smith is not hopeful that he will lower the temperature of national rhetoric, as many have called for since Saturday’s attempted assasination. Within hours of the shooting, Vance blamed President Joe Biden on Twitter for the attack.

My guess is that Trump had already decided on Vance before the shooting, or it was down to Vance and one or two others by then,” Smith said. “However, the effect of the pick will be to rachet up the temperature more.”

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Should America’s Primary System Be Reformed? https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/should-americas-primary-system-be-reformed/ Thu, 08 Feb 2024 14:05:52 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=181627 A Fordham democracy expert says the U.S. election process needs federal intervention

The 2024 presidential election is likely to be the first time since 1892 that an incumbent president is running against another former president. And with early primaries having such an outsized influence, the slate could be a virtual lock before Super Tuesday even rolls around—even though most Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch.

John Davenport, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Fordham and former director of Peace and Justice Studies, said there are three main problems with the uniquely American presidential primary system that have contributed to this likely matchup: the scheduling of the primaries, the way the delegates are determined, and a lack of uniformity in who can vote in each primary.

‘Glaringly Unfair Tradition’

The Constitution doesn’t say anything about how political parties or their nomination processes should work, because the authors didn’t foresee the power of parties, which now set their own primaries, Davenport said. One result is that just a few states keep holding the earliest primaries.

Davenport called it a “glaringly unfair tradition” that four states have cornered the market.

“Early primaries bring huge profits to businesses in early states and give them more influence. Iowa rescheduled its chaotic caucus to just a week after New Year’s Day in 2024, and New Hampshire’s Republican primary election was eight days later, followed soon by Nevada and South Carolina.” 

While outcomes in Iowa and New Hampshire are not always decisive, their small populations, combined with South Carolina’s, have enjoyed enormously disproportionate influence that can eliminate candidates who might have remained viable if the first primaries were held in more populous states, he said.

“Thus they can cut nine out of 10 American voters out of the process, especially when early frontrunners gain big leads,” he said, adding that “no other advanced democratic nation” allows this.

Lack of State Uniformity

Inconsistency in how delegates are awarded also affects who ultimately wins the party nominations.

Because the Republican primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire operate somewhat proportionally, Nikki Haley won 17 delegates to Trump’s 33 by garnering about 40% of the combined vote in those two states. But in South Carolina’s Republican primary this month, the majority winner in each district will take all of its delegates—meaning that Haley could get 38 to 40% of the votes but gain zero delegates out of the state’s 50-delegate total, That would make it much harder for her to raise funds for the races in Michigan and on Super Tuesday in early March. Davenport said. In still other Republican primaries, a candidate finishing first gets all or most of the state’s delegates.

By contrast, in Democratic primaries in all states, each candidate gets a number of delegates that is loosely proportional to their percentage of the popular vote. 

Who Gets to Vote?

Equally inconsistent is whether a state’s primaries are open to independent voters or just those in the party holding the primary.

New Hampshire’s Republican primary was open, and many independents voted, boosting Haley’s numbers. Nevada, which this year held both a Republican primary and caucus, closed those races to independents. 

What’s the Solution?

“Congress has the authority to change the primary election calendar, rotating the chance to hold early primaries among five or six regions of the U.S., so that every state gets a fair opportunity over five or six presidential election cycles to hold high-impact primaries,” said Davenport.

Federal law could also solve the delegate problem by mandating that political parties use one method to award convention delegates in all state primaries. And by mandating open primaries in all states, federal law could help moderate candidates continue longer in tight races, he said.

“These are just a few examples of sensible and non-partisan reforms,” said Davenport.

John Davenport has taught in undergraduate and graduate programs at Fordham since 1998. He is the author of several articles and books, including 2023’s The Democracy Amendments, which attempts to synthesize two decades of creative ideas to fix the federal system into a comprehensive program.

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Retired General Jack Keane Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/retired-general-jack-keane-awarded-presidential-medal-of-freedom/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 20:46:43 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=133851 Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a retired four-star U.S. Army general and widely respected national security and foreign policy expert, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March 10 by President Donald Trump, who lauded Keane as “a visionary, a brilliant strategist, and an American hero” during a White House ceremony.

“General, you will be remembered as one of the finest and most dedicated soldiers in a long and storied history of the United States military, no question about it,” the president said after describing Keane’s distinguished 38-year Army career stretching from his time as a cadet in the Fordham ROTC program to the Vietnam War to the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Among other achievements, Trump said, Keane “designed new training methods to ensure that military leaders would always be extremely well prepared for the intensity of combat command,” and also designed “state-of-the-art” counterinsurgency combat training for both urban and rugged environments.

In his own remarks, Keane said he was “deeply honored by this extraordinary award.”

“To receive it here in the White House, surrounded by family, by friends, and by senior government officials, is really quite overwhelming, and you can hear it in my voice,” he said. “I thank God for guiding me in the journey of life,” he said, also mentioning his “two great loves”—his wife Theresa, or Terry, who died in 2016, and the political commentator and author Angela McGlowan, “who I will love for the remainder of my life.”

“With all honesty, I wouldn’t be standing here without their love and their devotion,” he said.

Fordham Ties

Keane is the sixth Fordham graduate to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The most recent alumni recipient was sportscaster Vin Sully, FCRH ’49, awarded the medal by President Barack Obama in 2016.

Keane has advised President Trump and has often provided expert testimony to Congress since retiring as vice chief of staff of the Army in 2003. He is a Fordham trustee fellow and a 2004 recipient of the Fordham Founder’s Award.

Keane grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and was the first member of his family to attend college. He had 16 years of Catholic education, including his time at Fordham, where there was a prevailing idea that “you should have a sense of giving things back, and finding ways to do that,” he said in an interview last week on Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson Show.

Six other Fordham alumni, including some who were his contemporaries at Fordham, attended the ceremony. One of them, Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74, said he’s impressed with how Keane, on television, “can say so much in such a short time that makes sense.”

“He attributes a lot of it to the philosophy courses he took at Fordham,” said Jordan, an author and speaker specializing in financial services who met Keane about 15 years ago, when he was a senior executive at MetLife and Keane was on the board. “He’s a guy who’s extremely successful, extremely humble, has a common touch, and always remembers his friends and attributes a lot of his success not to himself but to the people around him, and the people who helped form him.”

Also in attendance was retired General Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, who has appeared at Fordham events, including the International Conference on Cyber Security.

Turning Points

Keane earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1966. He became a career paratrooper, going to Vietnam to serve with the 101st Airborne Division, which he later commanded.

He was decorated for valor in Vietnam, which was a turning point for him, with its close combat in which “death was always a silent companion,” he said.

“It was there I truly learned the value of life, the value of human life—to treasure it, to protect it,” he said in his White House remarks. “The experience crystallized for me the critical importance of our soldiers to be properly prepared with necessary skill and the appropriate amount of will to succeed in combat.”

He said he spent his Army career “among heroes who inspired me, and I’m still in awe of them today.”

“My sergeants, my fellow officers, and my mentors shaped me significantly, and several times they saved me from myself,” he said. “That’s the truth of it.”

The 9/11 attacks were a second major turning point for him, he said. He was in the Pentagon when it was attacked, and helped evacuate the injured. He lost 85 Army teammates, he said, and two days later was dispatched to New York City to take part in the response to the World Trade Center attacks.

“It was personal, and I was angry,” he said. “I could not have imagined that I would stay so involved in national security and foreign policy” after leaving the Army, he said. “My motivation is pretty simple: Do whatever I can, even in a small way, to keep America and the American people safe.”

Watch the ceremony honoring General Keane

group photo of Fordham alumni attending a reception following the awarding of the Medal of Freedom to retired General Jack Keane

Several Fordham alumni attended a reception honoring General Keane on March 10. From left: Scott Hartshorn, GABELLI ’98; Phil Crotty, FCRH ’64; the Rev. Charles Gallagher, FCRH ’06; Paul Decker, GABELLI ’65; Laurie Crotty, GSE ’77; General Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66; and Joe Jordan, GABELLI ’74. On the right is Roger A. Milici, Jr., vice president for development and university relations at Fordham.

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At ROTC Commissioning, a Call to Service and Vigilance https://now.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/at-rotc-commissioning-a-call-to-service-and-vigilance/ Thu, 23 May 2019 18:35:43 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=120807 In a commissioning ceremony rich with rousing cheers and martial fanfare, the 2019 graduates of Fordham’s ROTC program were lauded but also challenged by a retired four-star U.S. Army general who gave them a bracing talk on the new duties they face.

“To our soon-to-be officers, congratulations,” said Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a national security and foreign policy expert and Fordham trustee fellow who was the ceremony’s featured guest speaker. Later, he added: “The oath which you are about to take is a sacred trust between you and the American people.”

“We who take it, embrace it, and take it very seriously. I expect you to do the same,” said Keane, who administered the oath of office to the cadets. In his address, he outlined several security threats that he said will continue to challenge the military worldwide, ranging from a resurgent Russia to a belligerent and nuclear-armed North Korea.

Fordham ROTC cadets at their 2019 commissioning
ROTC cadets

Twenty-two cadets became second lieutenants at the May 17 commissioning ceremony, held in the University Church on the Rose Hill campus the day before Fordham’s 174th Annual Commencement. Another cadet was commissioned on May 20. Nine members of Fordham’s Class of 2019 were among the cadets, who attended a number of New York-area universities.

In his address, Keane told the cadets they are entering not just a job or a career but something “more akin to a vocation” because of the sacrifices and discipline it demands.

Keane noted that he began his own military career as a cadet in the Fordham ROTC program. Following his commissioning, he was assigned to an infantry paratroop unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

It was intimidating. “They were our very best. I did not know if I could measure up,” he said. “The noncommissioned officers, though subordinate to me, were also my teachers. Outside of our beloved Jesuits, they were the most professional and different group of men I ever encountered—smart, confident, totally dedicated, and completely selfless.”

They cared little about his background, he said. “What they wanted to know was, who was I? Was I willing to work hard to learn the necessary skills, did I really care, would my troops truly come first? In other words, they were … more interested in my heart than anything else.”

“I tried awfully hard to earn their respect and trust,” he said. “I eventually became one of them. I lived a life of shared experiences that enriched my life and my family’s beyond expectations.”

Retired General Jack Keane
Jack Keane

A career infantry paratrooper, Keane was a platoon leader and company commander in Vietnam, where he was decorated for valor. He commanded the 101st Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps, the Army’s largest war-fighting organization, and served as the Army’s acting chief of staff and vice chief of staff before retiring from the Army in 2003. He spoke about the Russia threat before the Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 1, one of many times he has provided expert testimony before Congress.

Keane said the U.S. faces security challenges “on a scale we have not seen since the end of World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union.” They include China’s efforts to dominate the Indo-Pacific region and supplant the U.S. as the world’s leader; radical Islam; and tensions being inflamed by Iran in the Middle East, in addition to the challenges posed by Russia and North Korea, he said.

In light of these threats, along with past defense budget cuts and the erosion of America’s military dominance, the Trump administration’s defense buildup “is even more critical than the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s,” he said. “The United States military is a much-needed deterrent to these dangers. Your job will be to prepare yourself, your unit and your troops, to be ready.”

“I am proud you want to serve your country,” he said. “We do not take your commitment lightly.”

Protecting America’s Ideals

Speaking before Keane took the podium, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, reflected on the ideals in the country’s founding documents, calling them “luminously beautiful” but also “inherently fragile.”

“They must be protected, defended, and nurtured in every generation,” he told the soon-to-be-commissioned cadets. “They have called out to you and they have awakened in you the same bold generosity that has marked the lives of our greatest heroes.”

“I admire your courage. I am grateful for your generosity,” Father McShane said. “I am challenged—as I always am when I am in the presence of heroes—by your selfless love of our nation.”

Posting of the Colors during Fordham's 2019 ROTC commissioning ceremony
The posting of the colors

During the ceremony, Father McShane presented Lt. Col. Samuel Linn, professor of military science at Fordham, with a certificate praising him for his “transformative leadership” of the ROTC program over the past three years. Linn is departing for Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to command an artillery battalion.

Two cadets were presented with awards honoring distinguished military graduates: Declan Wollard, GABELLI ’19, received the President’s Sabre, and Chris Bolton of Columbia University earned the General Jack Keane Award.

Also on May 17, two Fordham students earned commissions in the Navy ROTC program based at SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx, and the University held an inaugural Victory Bell ceremony at the Rose Hill campus to honor the veterans among the Class of 2019.

 

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North Korea Visit More Photo Op Than Summit https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/north-korea-visit-more-a-goat-rodeo-than-a-summit/ Thu, 21 Jun 2018 20:01:44 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=93217 The day after a June 12 visit to Singapore for the first ever meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, President Trump tweeted:

“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer – sleep well tonight!”

In a recent conversation with Fordham News, Raymond Kuo, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science and an expert on international relations and Asia, said it’s not quite that simple.

Full transcript below

Raymond Kuo: The major lesson is that if you have nuclear weapons, you get a seat at the table. If you’re Iraq and you’re hiding the fact or a little coy about the fact that you may or may not have nuclear weapons, you’ll get invaded by the United States. If you give up your weapons like you did in Libya, eventually you as a leader will get killed, and if you’re Iran and negotiate an agreement, well the U.S. isn’t going to hold up its end of the bargain. So, much, much better to just have the nuclear weapons and hold onto them because that is your one guarantee, and you get a seat at the table.

Patrick Verel: “Before taking office, people were assuming that we were going to war with North Korea. President Obama said North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer. Sleep well tonight.” After a June 12th visit to Singapore with the first ever meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, this was how President Trump summed things up in a June 13th tweet. Sounds promising, right? But before we break out the Nobel Peace Prize polish, we sat down with assistant professor of political science, Raymond Kuo, an expert on international relations in Asia. I’m Patrick Verel, and this is Fordham News.

Patrick Verel: How much safer do you feel after this meeting?

Raymond Kuo: Not that much safer. Compared to last year, it’s better that they’re not insulting each other. Trump’s not calling Kim little rocket man and threatening each other with nuclear attack. The fact that they didn’t end up killing each other at the summit, that’s a pretty good sign. But generally speaking, I don’t know if you really get credit for de-escalating a conflict that you previously escalated. And there has been no real change in North Korea’s capabilities. They’re still able to hit the United States with their nuclear weapons, their ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology. The on the ground facts really haven’t changed all that much after the summit. So, in terms of how much safer I feel? Eh, we didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust. That’s great.

Patrick Verel: Do you feel as if the meeting achieved anything new or concrete, or was it all just basically a photo op?

Raymond Kuo: It was mostly a photo op. It had some marginal achievements, but North Korea has promised denuclearization many times in the past, 1985, 1992, 1994, 2005, 2007, 2012. And there are more that aren’t even on that list. Those are just some major agreements. It’s good to get North Korea and the United States talking, but the process was a real mess. Normally the way these summits happen is that you have a build-up on the lower levels of the government to try to reach some kind of foundational agreement, and then you build more and more towards more advanced, more comprehensive agreements. Then you bring in the president and the heads of state to finalize those treaties.

Generally this wasn’t what happened here at all. It was a real missed opportunity. Trying to get complete and verifiable dismantling of the nuclear weapons, setting that as a goal of the meeting, wasn’t gonna be possible, and it meant that they didn’t do a lot of lower level process stuff. Information sharing, verification of the number of nuclear sites. We could have done a lot more work to help reduce the North Korean arsenal. Even if it may have not eliminated it, but reduce it, deter the export of nuclear technology, which they’ve done to Pakistan, and then help to avoid accidents or accidental escalation. So, generally speaking this was a photo op, or as Ankit Panda has said, a really great nuclear nonproliferation expert called it a “goat rodeo.”

His major point about all of this was that  especially in the media, have tended to treat the summit as a normal presidential head of state summit, which it wasn’t that. You didn’t have the foundational process. You didn’t have the lower level people getting involved. There was a danger I think even a week before that the U.S. side would pull out. And the lack of U.S. preparation really showed. The meeting itself was a giveaway. It’s something that the North Koreans have wanted for literally decades. Trump’s suggestion that we would cancel the joint military exercised with the South Koreans wasn’t coordinated with South Korea or Japan. Then he adopted the Chinese and North Korean language on those exercises, which was a propaganda coup for both the Chinese as well as North Korea.

Patrick Verel: Now John Bolton, who’s Trump’s National Security Advisor, has touted Libya as a model for how North Korea might give up its nuclear weapons, but given that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was subsequently overthrown and killed in 2011, why would anybody look at that country and say, “Yeah that’s how this should be done”?

Raymond Kuo: Well they wouldn’t. Not if you want to have effective diplomacy, but that’s Bolton’s point. Bolton’s been pretty consistent and diplomacy was just something to get out of the way very, very quickly so we could get to that military solution. To some extent if I could say that there’s a loser out of the summit, then Bolton was actually it. Diplomacy didn’t end in warfare, so he wasn’t able to push diplomacy out of the way to get to that war, that military solution that he really wanted. But do remember that Bolton, it’s suggested, made the Libya connection because he wanted to derail the summit. Kim criticized Bolton’s statement because essentially it threatens regime change. When Trump effectively heard that Kim was thinking about canceling, he preemptively canceled on Kim. But that was also a bad move. It made Kim seem like the diplomat. It put China, South Korea, and North Korea all on the same side, and if he had just let Kim cancel it, then the South Korea and the Chinese would be on the US’s side and provide more leverage going into the negotiation.

Patrick Verel: Obviously when you talk about past agreements, the one that’s even more recent than Libya would be Iran. We managed to convince them to stop building nuclear weapons in 2015. Then we withdrew from that agreement in May. How do you think that withdrawal will effect these negotiations going forward with North Korea?

Raymond Kuo: Well it strongly undermines American credibility. Set aside if you think the JCPO, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, was a good deal or not, the fundamental point is that the U.S. made the agreement. Some people say, “Well it was done by executive agreement,” but most international agreements right now are done completely by the executive. We have very few actual treaties anymore. If the U.S. is unwilling to abide by executive agreement that it made with a whole bunch of different provisions and lots of detail, then why should Kim trust anything the U.S. says right now? That’s the fundamental problem of credibility in international negotiations. And reputations, consistency, these sorts of things really matter. Kim essentially baked that idea in, that the U.S. may not be a credible negotiator, but I’m coming to the table for this photo op. He didn’t necessarily get tricked into thinking that the US could be trusted because he didn’t give away all that much, if anything.

Patrick Verel: Where do you think China plays in all this?

Raymond Kuo: China and North Korea are probably the big winners out of the summit. China is North Korea’s only ally. It tends to be an uncertain one at that. They like the North Koreans because they’re a buffer state and a hedge against US power. If the U.S. wants to do anything in east Asia, it has to contend with the DPRK as well as the Chinese. And also any regime collapse happening in North Korea would be really, really bad. Kim’s standing in North Korea has evidently increased. The North Korea stays, it remains as a buffer state with nuclear weapons. There was a fear that North Korea was trying to shift to the United States, which wasn’t likely, but there was at least the idea that North Korea was gonna play the U.S. and Chinese off of each other. That didn’t seem to happen. And the summit gives China a pretext for reducing sanctions. That’s the critical thing, and it’s already starting to happen.

Trump talks about his maximum pressure campaign. What that means is that we’re getting all of our allies together in the Chinese and maybe even the Russians together to impose sanctions on the North Koreans, but the success or marginal success or the optic success of diplomacy in the summit means that China can already start to reduce those sanctions, reduce the bite that the North Koreans are feeling, and make a lot of money out of the situation. On top of that, there are a couple wins in terms of Trump called the joint military exercises war games. He called them provocative. This parrots the line of Beijing, and it’s pretty much a propaganda coup that you’re definitely gonna see in future videos and things from the Chinese.

Patrick Verel: Do you have any thoughts about what might happen going forward?

Raymond Kuo: The Secretary of State Pompeo’s trying to follow up on these conversations and reach some sort of agreement, but it’s really difficult to see how the U.S. is gonna get anything close to a coherent agreement out of this or an effective agreement out of this. Maybe the U.S. will be able to leverage the summit, but if the Chinese are already reducing their sanctions, if the North Koreans are getting relief from the things that brought them to the table to begin with, and the U.S. didn’t get any of that stuff in advance, it’s hard to see how the U.S. gains more of a negotiation when it has less leverage. My general feeling is that we’ll be back here in a few years, just like we have been since the 1980’s, if not earlier.

Patrick Verel: One thing I heard was that there was a possibility that North Korea might be looking to China to model for them. Kim basically is looking to China and says, “Well they have this style of government, but they still have free markets, so they get the best of both worlds. They get access to markets, but they still get to maintain control over the society and get to keep nuclear weapons.”

Raymond Kuo: The Chinese economic structure and the North Korean economic structure are very, very different. There’s a concern. This hearkens back to old modernization theory from the 1950’s and 1960’s that if you try to modernize an economy too quickly, you’ll end up getting revolutions. There’s some concern that that North Koreans are so impoverished that even seeing Kim go to Singapore and the technology and the standard of living they have over there might cause some degree of unrest within North Korea. The idea that they Pyongyang would open up the same way that the Chinese have done, they would be much, much more cautious about that. On top of it, President Xi Jinping has been consolidating national industries. So the lesson that Kim might get is well, we don’t need to open up. We just need to have great power status or prestige. Then I can get all the luxury goods I want and I can maintain state control of a variety of different, like military production, agriculture, communications and that kind of thing.

In terms of nuclear weapons, I think the major lesson that Kim has drawn from all of this is not from China, but from Iraq, Libya, and Iran. The major lesson is that if you have nuclear weapons, you get a seat at the table. If you’re Iraq and you’re hiding the fact or are a little coy about the fact that you may or may not have nuclear weapons, you’ll get invaded by the United States. If you give up your weapons like you did in Libya, eventually you as a leader will get killed, and if you’re Iran and negotiate an agreement, well the U.S. isn’t gonna hold up its end of the bargain. So much, much better to just have the nuclear weapons and hold onto them because that is your one guarantee, and you get a seat at the table.

Patrick Verel: Okay, this has been seriously depressing.

Raymond Kuo: Yeah it is. But look, the way I tend to think about nuclear weapons is that it is a miracle that somehow these enormously powerful weapons have not been used on each other and that we’re still alive. It’s both depressing, absolutely true, but also it make you really appreciate every day you wake up.

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Sociology Professor Offers Lessons from Sanders Presidential Run https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/sociology-professor-offers-lessons-from-sanders-presidential-run/ Thu, 03 May 2018 19:13:28 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=89155
Heather Gautney
Heather Gautney, who describes her book “Crashing the Party,” as half op-ed, half policy analysis of the 2016 presidential election

Heather Gautney, Ph.D., felt the “Bern.” And now she wants to share what she learned from it.

In her just-published book, Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement (Verso, 2018), Gautney, an associate professor of sociology at Fordham, detailed what it was like to work with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as he campaigned for the 2016 Democratic party presidential nomination. Gautney had previously worked for Sanders when she was an American Sociological Association Fellow during the 2012-2013 academic year and joined his campaign in 2015 as a researcher.

She described the book as half policy analysis, half op-ed, with a particular emphasis on the lessons the Democratic Party should take from Sanders’ surprisingly strong showing in the primaries and the triumph of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Although Sanders ultimately lost the nomination to Clinton, Gautney said his candidacy exposed what she called the contradictions of the Democratic Party’s platform for the last four decades.

Shifting Attitudes Among Voters

“What his campaign did was expose that at least half of the Democratic Party are really people who identify as progressives or support a progressive agenda, and since he ran, I think we’ve been seeing a real shift toward supporting that agenda,” she said.

Cover of Crashing the Party, by Heather GautneyAs evidence, she pointed to proposals to expand Medicare to all U.S. citizens. Sanders has been promoting the idea for years with little success, but this past year, the plan had 16 co-signers, including Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

To some extent, Gautney said she feels that the fact that Trump won is evidence that the party should reconsider issues that Sanders and Democratic leaders butted heads on, such as trade, free education, and universal healthcare.

A “neoliberal agenda that promotes growth, prosperity for all, the wonders of globalization and consumerism and the high-tech future” has left many people behind and cost Democrats voters in places like Wisconsin, she said.

“There’s been lots of glossy language about the wonders of free trade, and yet this was a huge issue in 2016 for people [who opposed it]in Midwestern states,” she said.

A Revival for Ideas Past

Gautney said she was as surprised as anyone else that Sanders got as far as he did and viewed his popularity with millennials as proof that the time is right to promote his agenda. This would have been true even in the event of a Clinton victory, which Gautney assumed would be the case when she started writing the book. To those who say the notion that free education is a radical idea, she noted that City College of New York, her alma mater, was once tuition-free.

“These are things that in some way or form have existed, so Bernie’s goal has been to say that. We are the wealthiest country on earth, we can achieve these things, and we can take care of our people,” she said.

“We can rebuild the middle class in this country. It’ll be like the middle class that existed in the 1950’s, except this time it’ll be a more diverse middle class, and women and people of color will be included.”

Gautney devoted a chapter to the schisms between the Sanders and Clinton camps that were never fully healed. In another, she elucidates the difference between social movements and elections. She also delved into the outreach efforts that Sanders embarked on after the November election to help him get a better handle on why former Barack Obama voters in battleground states then voted for Trump.

It was sobering, she said, because so many of the promises that Sanders had campaigned on—like more money for social security and stronger support of Medicare and Medicaid—were ones Trump embraced as well, and these voters chose to support Trump. She contends that class has a lot to do with it.

“Over the last three or four decades, a class perspective has increasingly been taken off the table, and one of the things that this 2016 election did was put it firmly back on. I argue that class is really a fundamental organizing principle of this election season, on both the right and left,” she said.

The takeaway of the book should be of interest to partisans on both sides of the aisle, she said.

“I think it’ll be interesting as a sort of historical accounting for this kind of moment, and one that reaches back into the 1970s and then reaches forward to 2020 and maybe even beyond.”

Gautney will discuss her book with Adolph Reed Jr. and Cornel West on May 16 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. For more details, visit the event website.

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Panel Addresses Bleak Future for U.S. https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/panel-addresses-bleak-future-u-s/ Fri, 01 Dec 2017 15:32:16 +0000 https://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=80810 The echoes of the 2016 presidential election reverberated loudly at a panel discussion held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Nov. 29.

In the panel discussion “Imperfect Union: Has America Lost its Moral Center?” organized by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, participants discussed the degradation of foundational principles of equality, tolerance, and free speech, in the United States over the past year.

Moderator Don Wycliff, a columnist for Chicago Catholic and contributor to Commonweal magazine, noted that the evidence that the country has lost its moral center seems to be everywhere. In Alabama, he noted, U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has the support of the Republican party, and is leading in many polls, despite multiple accusations of pedophilia against him.

“We elected a president who seems to respect none of the traditional norms. Maybe things need to be shaken up, but calling into question the respect for the rule of law and other such basic principles is very radical,” he said.

The Threat of Fake News

Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America, mounted a spirited defense of the independent press. The truth is at the top of the list of things we’re at risk of losing, she said, citing the fact that that very morning, President Trump shared on Twitter misleading and false videos ostensibly showing Muslims attacking non-Muslims.

Fraudulent news is a serious threat to open, healthy and vibrant discourse, she said, and according to Gallup, only 32 percent of Americans said they have a fair amount of trust in the news media last year, down 8 percentage points from the year before, and more than 20 percentage points lower than 1997.

‘We see some boost in readership over the last year as we all rally around the Washington Post and the New York Times, but that comes the Eastern seaboard and from people around the world,” she said.

“It’s not coming from the heartland, where we see an erosion of trust and interest in the mainstream media.”

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former deputy director of speechwriting for President George W. Bush, lamented the direction his party had taken and predicted that if it continued in its the current trajectory, he’d leave the party.

“Any nation that elects Donald Trump as president has a remarkably low view of politics. He ran for president with no experience and no obvious qualifications for the job, and it’s manifested itself every day since he took office,” he said.

Changing Expectations of Politics

Trump didn’t materialize from nowhere, however. Wehner noted that American politics has become an arena for conflict rather a place for problem solving. He advocated for inclusive prosperity, and for politicians to make the case for politics as a force for good.

“Politics has become a replacement for community and meaning, and a sense of belonging for a lot of people. I think that explains in large part some of the tribalism we’re seeing,” he said.

“We have to recover the deep purposes of dialogue and debate, which is not to win, but to get a little closer to the truth.”

Zephyr Teachout, professor at Fordham School of Law, likewise highlighted larger trends. During her recent campaign for New York’s 19th congressional district, she said she encountered an unbelievable amount of loneliness.

“I think loneliness is incredibly important part of understanding where we are in this particular moment,” she said, noting that the prevalence of hallowed out retail areas across the country.

“Loneliness has a lot of sources, but commercial life, like as civic life, has always been part of the way in which we come together.

We have forgotten the importance of anti-trust laws, not just to take on these big guys who are stealing our tax dollars, but also to support a thriving small business community. The other political story of 2016 is not Donald Trump; it’s the fact that we had more big mergers than we’ve ever had.”

There are also two different but complimentary kinds of excessive individualism at play in American politics, said John Carr, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.

On the right, economic individualism has been blended with nationalism and racial resentment. On the left, personal autonomy has been elevated above all else. Neither makes room for the common good, for care for the poor and the vulnerable, or for dealing with racism or economic and educational disparities.

“In one, we’re really on our own, in the other we’re a collection of interest groups. When you add in polarization and ideological isolation, it leads to a kind of tribalism that is based on resentments, feeds our anger and makes it very hard to pursue the common good,” he said.

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Scholars Parse Seismic Shifts in American Political Life  https://now.fordham.edu/law/scholars-parse-seismic-shifts-in-american-political-life/ Thu, 06 Apr 2017 19:41:36 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=66601 What does it mean to be a good American citizen in 2017? Do political campaigns need to recalibrate to compete effectively?

These were some of the questions addressed in a wide-ranging conversation held on April 5 at Fordham Law.

“Fake News & Twitter Wars: Media & Politics in the Trump Years” brought together Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, Ph.D., assistant professor of communication and media studies and author of Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law and author of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, (Harvard University Press, 2016).

When it comes to political campaigns, the speakers noted that some politicians run campaigns that decentralize tasks while others’ campaigns decentralize power. However, the traditional structure has changed very little, consisting of a finance director, a communications shop, and a political/field operations area. This arrangement caused endless conflict when the internet became a tool of campaigns, and hasn’t entirely abated.

“In 2008, ‘digital’ was under communications in almost every single campaign. In 2010, it was still under communications in almost every campaign. Even where they started to have their own fourth pillar, the [two]would fight constantly,” Baldwin-Philippi said. “And it continues. Most campaigns still have those three pillars.”

Baldwin-Philippi said that when she began researching her book in 2010, campaigns were painstakingly fact checking to prove their points. It was, she said, a short-lived phenomenon, however. Today, Americans need to become more adept at recognizing propaganda if they are to be a well-informed citizenry.

“Traditionally, we’ve measured being informed as knowing there are three branches of government, and knowing who the vice president is. I think we really need to move beyond these ways of measuring and pointing to good citizenship,” she said.

Teachout cautioned against the rise of media outlets that are ostensibly conservative but are “actually nihilistic.” There’s some merit to the saying that politics and the truth have never had a good relationship, she said—but at the same time politics cannot exist without a belief in the possibility of facts.

“Skepticism is one thing. But a radical cynicism actually makes conversation extremely difficult because then there is no final reference to which one can go to,” she said. “This kind of postmodern approach is incredibly dangerous for our discourse.”

Both speakers said that corruption was a central theme of the 2016 presidential election. Many voters chose Donald Trump because they felt the entire system was corrupt and wanted to throw it all out and start fresh.

Teachout noted that we can’t actually tell if another person is corrupt, or using public power for private, selfish ends, because we can’t look into another person’s heart. However, we can enforce laws that prohibit selfish behavior.

She criticized President Trump for refusing to separate himself from his businesses while in office, which she called a clear conflict of interest.

She also had harsh words for Hillary Clinton. When questions were raised about connections between The Clinton Foundation and her service as Secretary of State, Clinton simply said there was no “smoking gun” that proved obvious quid pro quo transactions.

“[The statement] suggests we should only be concerned about those circumstances, when we can see a smoking gun,” she said. “It actually pushes on a heavy legalism, which our current president has adopted and exaggerated.”

“It’s important that we respect conflict-of-interest norms,” she said.

The event, which was moderated by Eric Sundrup, S.J. associate editor of America magazine, was the second in the Maloney Law Library’s Behind the Book series, which brings together scholars to discuss their research on contemporary issues and the publishing experience.

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Dear Mr. President: What Catholics Want Trump to Know https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/dear-mr-president-what-catholics-want-trump-to-know/ Mon, 30 Jan 2017 15:05:44 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=63660 What would you say to President Donald Trump if given the opportunity to exchange a few words with him?

That was the question posed by J. Patrick Hornbeck, chair of the Department of Theology, to kick off “Dear Mr. President: Catholic Social Teaching, Civil Discourse, and the Trump Presidency,” a discussion presented by Fordham University’s Department of Theology and Office of Alumni Relations, featuring a distinguished panel of theologians, scholars, and journalists.

The question did not elicit a simple answer.

The panelists, Christine Emba, a Washington Post columnist; David Gibson, a national reporter of Religion News Service; Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Ph.D., FCRH ’98, associate professor of religious studies at Manhattan College; and Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., professor of theology at Fordham, brought complexities to the discussion— which was held at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Jan. 26.

(L-R) Washington Post columnist Christine Emba  and Religion News Service reporter David Gibson.

Father Massingale said that truth is essential in discussing the incoming policies of President Trump, who won 52 percent of the Catholic vote, according to a Pew national exit poll. Whether Catholics identify as liberals, conservatives, Democrats, or Republicans, civil discourse cannot exist without “a respect for the truth,” he said.

Imperatori-Lee noted that Catholic social teaching also requires a place in our national discourse to speak the truth; she said this has been a challenge in recent days.

“The relationship between the way in which our nation is being governed right now and Catholic social teaching seem to be two realities that almost cannot come into dialogue at this point,” she said.

Part of seeking and finding truth is accepting the realities of the election, said Emba, who believes that one of the most important questions facing Catholics today is “what do we do next?”

“I think that the pursuit of the human good was set aside during the election in favor of partisan discussions and anger, and [pursuing]that will be the work of the administration both in the first six days and going forward,” she said.

Speaking “truth to power” 

Father Massingale highlighted the dichotomy between law and morality, and how that has contributed to polarization both within and outside of the Catholic community. But Catholics still have a moral obligation to stand up for the poor, what is sacred, and their convictions, he said.

(L-R) Panelists Bryan Massingale, Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Christine Emba, and David Gibson discuss Catholic social teaching, civil discourse, and the Trump Presidency at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus on Jan. 26, 2017.

“Trump may have won the presidency, but that election did not un-elect my conscience,” he said.

Imperatori-Lee said that in the weeks ahead, Catholics may find themselves on the “periphery” but must protect vulnerable populations. “This is our deepest Catholic calling,” she said.

Embracing Catholic social teaching in its totality

Some discussion focused on the visceral connection that many Catholics have to certain contentious issues. During the election, issues such as gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose took precedence over the totality of Catholic social teaching, which encompasses everything from the death penalty to economic and racial injustices, panelists said.

“I think that we as a church need to find a way to make all of those issues part of our identity, and also think about why we’re focusing on some and not particularly interested in talking about others,” said Emba.

Bringing all aspects of Catholic social teaching to the forefront requires a firm commitment to the Catholic tradition of civil disobedience, particularly against unjust laws, Father Massingale said.

“Civil disobedience is something that’s not only deeply American, it is also something that’s deeply Christian,” he said. “It’s founded on the basic conviction that human law is not absolute. Human law has legitimacy only when it is moral, and there’s a difference between legal legitimacy and moral legitimacy.”

As the discussion came to an end, the panelists were asked to share their vision for the future as the country prepares for the next four years under Trump’s administration.

“What I just keep saying to people is that the reason that Trump is president is because people voted for him,” said Gibson, who encouraged the audience to become proactive during a Trump presidency. He later continued, “Our problem is we’re partisan. We need to be political, and that means we work with people who disagree with us.”

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Panel Debates Shifting Role of Faith in National Politics https://now.fordham.edu/politics-and-society/panel-debates-shifting-role-of-faith-in-national-politics/ Thu, 20 Oct 2016 17:00:00 +0000 http://news.fordham.sitecare.pro/?p=57617 In an election year when countless political norms have been shattered, the role of religion has likewise been thrown into disarray, a panel agreed on Oct. 18 at the Lincoln Center campus.

Soul-Searching on the Eve of the Election: Religion and the Future of American Politics,” a panel discussion held by the Center on Religion and Culture, tackled everything from Catholics’ role in the 2016 election to the silence surrounding ISIS’ genocide of Christians and Yazidis.

A large part of the night was devoted to discussing white evangelical voters’ support for Donald Trump. David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said that in 2016, race, gender, and partisan identity are more influential than religion. Levels of social capital and age are also a factor, as white evangelicals who are younger and have more social networks are resisting their leaders’ embrace of Trump.

Eddie Glaude Jr., the author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (Crown, 2016), said in the black community, religion still has a place in the political arena. Bree Newsome, the woman who climbed a flagpole in June 2015 to remove a Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse, recited Psalms 27 as she was alighting from the pole.

Tom Reese, S.J., columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, pointed out parallels in the decline of both religious and political groups. In 2014, 39 percent of Americans identified politically as independents. Likewise, the number of people identifying as having no religious affiliation (“nones”) has increased to about 25 percent of the U.S. population.

Panelists criticized the Obama Administration’s inattention to religiously motivated killings. Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute Center for Religious Freedom, said that in March, the administration correctly labeled the killing of Yazidis by ISIS as a genocide, yet has done little to publicize the issue since then.

Perhaps due to her Methodist background, Hillary Clinton seems uncomfortable talking about her religion, said Father Reese. Her campaign is trying to simultaneously appeal to Hispanic Catholics, black Protestants and most importantly, young people who identify as “nones.” Push religion too hard, he said, and they risk alienating nonreligious voters.

“The Democratic party is quite conflicted when it comes to how they want to talk about religion. They’ll talk about  [it]one way in the black community and with Hispanics, but with a different crowd, it’s just not an issue,” he said.

When it comes to Catholic voters, Father Reese said, although they traditionally lean Republican, it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll vote this year. The primary exit polls only asked if a voter was evangelical; not if they were Catholic.

What is clear, he said, is that many religious leaders have become like “generals without troops.” Black religious leaders championed Hillary Clinton in 2008 but then switched their support for Barack Obama when Obama started winning votes on the ground in primaries. In this election cycle, white evangelical leaders supported Ted Cruz, yet their followers backed Donald Trump.

Blankenhorn said the Church of Latter Day Saints is a rare exception. Its leaders and followers traditionally vote Republican, but are both shunning Trump in such numbers that Trump may lose the state of Utah. It’s not a coincidence that the church is growing, and members have high levels of social capital.

“One thing that’s interesting to me is this trend where a few groups take a different path,” he said.

Video of the discussion can be found here.

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