Measure to Limit Solitary Confinement Advances in Senate Immigration Bill

Originally published in Solitary Watch on May 29, 2013.

The immigration reform bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week includes an amendment that would curtail the use of solitary confinement on immigrant detainees. While the measure’s reach is limited, its passage by the Committee nonetheless represents a significant step for human rights activists working to help shape the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, which will be debated by the full Senate in June.

The amendment, Blumenthal 2, was drafted by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT). It sets limits on the use of solitary confinement for adults–in most cases, 15 days–and bans it for all children under 18 years old. The measure also explicitly prohibits the use of solitary confinement to “protect” detainees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

While the amendment does make it more difficult, it falls short of banning solitary confinement for detainees with mental illness. Detention centers that opt to isolate mentally ill individuals are required to have a medical professional visit with the immigrant at least three times each week as well as weekly visits by a mental health clinician for regular evaluations.

Lastly, the amendment has an oversight component so that detention facilities must submit both the reason for and the duration of all solitary confinement sentences to Congress annually for review.

The Senate’s attention to solitary confinement is relatively historic. Last June the first-ever congressional hearing, led by Richard Durbin (D-IL) was held to discuss the legal, economic and psychological costs of solitary confinement. While a host of local groups have cropped up to fight solitary confinement on the state level, Congress has largely avoided the issue.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations, sent a letter in support of Blumenthal 2 to Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively. The letter said, “The amendment balances the operational needs of facilities that hold immigration detainees with basic respect for the health and human rights of detainees subject to solitary confinement.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also gave vocal support to the passage of the amendment and said, “The adoption of the amendment takes positive steps forward in fixing a serious injustice the extent of which has only recently come to light.”

Due to increased enforcement measures put in place by the Obama administration, the immigration detention population has dramatically increased. There are 85 percent more immigrants detained today than there were in 2005, and these detentions are usually indefinite sentences. Individuals are held, often for months at a time, until either they voluntarily sign deportation documents or until immigration authorities decide whether to deport the immigrants or let them stay.

Observers argue that while placing U.S. prisoners in solitary confinement is problematic, placing alledgedly undocumented immigrants in solitary confinement is even worse because these individuals are not even serving criminal sentences, but are simply waiting for civil deportation hearings. Beyond that, critics argue that solitary confinement hurts detainees’ ability to fight their cases due to highly restricted access to telephones and other means of communication.

In March, Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano said that she believes “solitary confinement should be the exception, not the rule.” She asked federal immigration officials to report back with greater detail about the usage and implementation of solitary confinement in federal facilities.

A March 2013 article by the New York Times and The Investigative Reporting Workshop found that on any given day, U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials hold approximately 300 immigrants in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities across the country. Their research showed that nearly 50 percent of these individuals are kept in solitary confinement for 15 days or more–a point that psychiatric experts say detainees are at risk for severe mental harm. The study found that about 35 detainees are kept for more than 75 days.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on immigration, responded to the report by sending a letter to John Morton, director of ICE urging him to change their use of solitary confinement. “This report suggests an overreliance by the ICE on the harshest forms of incarceration,” Schumer wrote.

In 2012, the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center and Physicians for Human Rights, surveyed conditions in many detention centers and county jails that work in conjunction with the ICE. This was the first comprehensive study on the effects of solitary confinement on immigration detainees. The research showed that solitary confinement is often arbitrarily and punitively applied, inadequately monitored and damaging to detainees’ health; investigators also found that most immigrants are denied any meaningful avenues of appeal. Additionally, they found that ICE failed to hold detention centers and jails accountable for their use and abuse of solitary confinement.

Blumenthal 2 would be first federal legislation to place limitations on the duration and circumstances under which detained immigrants can be placed in solitary confinement.  It is unclear at this point whether the amendment will pass the full Senate or the House.

The measure would apply only to those held in immigrant detention, and not to all federal prisoners. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is estimated to hold at least 10,000 individuals in isolation in prisons across the country, and is not subject to any laws that that regulate, monitor, and restrict the use and abuse of solitary confinement in federal prisons.

Where are the STEM jobs?

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on May 24, 2013. 
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Republicans and Democrats appear to agree on at least one thing: that the United States is facing a STEM (science, technology engineering and math) crisis. In his most recent State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared that he wants to “reward schools” that focus on STEM classes, for they are “the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.” And as far to the other end of the political spectrum as you can get, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas deemed May 6-12 to be the first ever “Celebration of STEM Education Week in Texas.”

I’m an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University — by all measures, a very STEM-oriented institution. I’m studying history and sociology, and it’s quite common for students like me to envy those with academic talents enabling them to major in fields like chemical engineering or neuroscience. Bleak job reports and doomsday rhetoric from our nation’s leaders reinforce this idea that maybe the remainder of us studying the liberal arts are somehow putting a drain on our society, and preventing the United States from “competing effectively” with other nations.

And yet, it turns out that the job prospects for my STEM-oriented classmates may not be so great either.

Recently, the Economic Policy Institute released a report that challenged conventional wisdom; the report says that over half of students with STEM degrees each year are unable to find STEM employment upon graduation. Additionally, STEM wages have not budged in over a decade. Stagnant wages and low rates of STEM job placement strongly indicate a surplus of STEM workers, not a dearth. The problem points to a lack of jobs, not of qualified workers.

Of course, science, technology, engineering and math are important fields, and we should aim to provide exemplary education for students interested in such subjects. But there is a danger in creating a false hope that if only we got everyone to switch from English to math, our economy would suddenly soar. Unemployment in the United States is at 7.5 percent, which is 3.2 points higher than the pre-recession low. The deep-seated unemployment in our country will require not only job training in STEM fields but also things like monetary and fiscal stimulus to boost employment during this rough period.

The alleged STEM crisis has also been a popular point of agreement among lawmakers and tech moguls as Congress struggles to draft an immigration reform bill. It’s been politically safe to say that we must carve an easy path for STEM foreign workers to come to our country in order to boost our global competitiveness — in fact, one of the few amendments accepted in the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill this week was a provision to increase the number of visas for such high-skill workers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently launched a new organization, called FWD.us, to bolster support for, among other things, an increase in the number of visas granted to foreign skilled workers.

However, Science Careers, a branch of Science magazine, reported that the bill would make already congested labor markets even more competitive with the influx of foreign workers. Additionally, STEM labor force expert Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, who spoke in April at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the proposed immigration legislation, adamantly refutes the notion that there is an overall STEM shortage in the United States. He argues that H1-B and other worker visa programs have lowered wages and allowed for more labor exploitation in domestic STEM markets.

The 844-page immigration bill would quadruple or quintuple the number of high-skill visas currently allowed in the United States. As Bloomberg Businessweek’s Elizabeth Dwoskin writes, “If you’re a recent college graduate, a doctoral candidate, or a highly skilled professional who has been in the job market the past few years, you know it’s rough out there. But if the immigration overhaul proposed in the Senate … becomes law, it’s likely to get a lot rougher.”

The bill would be great for businesses like Mr. Zuckerberg’s that are looking to hire talented workers at lower prices. However, for American citizens graduating with STEM degrees and struggling to find employment today, it may not look so great.

Science, technology, engineering and math are important skills in the 21st century economy. But unfortunately, even they turn out to be no guarantee.

Labor Reawakens

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 26, 2013.

This week, hundreds of Chicago workers organized a major labor strike, demanding a wage floor of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Their protests come on the heels of the largest strike in the fast food industry’s history, which took place in December in New York City, and a nation-wide Walmart strike to protest what workers felt were unfair wages and treatment. Here in Baltimore, workers have also begun organizing around the idea of “fair development” — calling for higher wages and other benefits.

Chicago’s strike represents just how contagious this type of unrest has become. Led by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, in collaboration with other local worker groups and unions, they are leading the “Fight for 15” campaign to raise the minimum wage.

Who can blame them? Minimum wage in Chicago, at $8.25, is already $1 more than the federal requirement. Yet if one works 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks a year, the resulting salary is $17,160 before taxes, well below the poverty level for a family of three. In November, the Census Bureau announced that more than 16 percent of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20 percent of American children. This figure had risen from 14.3 percent in 2009 and was at its highest level since 1993.

The National Employment Law Project found last year that low-wage positions made up just 21 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, but they accounted for 58 percent of jobs “recovered.” Additionally, researchers found that food service, retail and employment services represented 43 percent of employment growth over the past two years.

The workers organizing strikes and protests face tough odds, as unionism is widely perceived to be on the wane, even in the public sector. But something has to give. A mere 88,000 jobs were created in March, and labor-force participation is at its lowest since 1979, as millions have decided that the work world offers insufficient opportunities. If we can’t figure out a way to incentivize stable employment through livable wages, then we could be in for years of economic stagnation or worse.

The protesting workers doubtless have decided they need to take matters into their own hands because Washington has done little to help.

To be sure, President Barack Obama has talked extensively about the need to revive the middle class and about the ill effects of a system in which the rich get richer and the rest fall behind. He has endorsed increasing the minimum wage and included a proposal to do so in his budget package.

But he has managed to accomplish little. Even talking about the problem inevitably leads to Republican cries of “class warfare” that drown out and end the conversation. But it’s a conversation we need to have. Real annual median household income has dropped to $45,018, from $51,144 in 2010. Virtually all the gains from the economic recovery continue to go to the richest people in the United States.

The increasing polarization of our wealth is stunting economic growth, and that’s bad for the poor and rich alike. But it is not inevitable. We’re glad to see workers in Baltimore, New York, Chicago and elsewhere speak up and demand change. Washington needs to brave up and confront this too. An increase in the federal minimum wage won’t solve the problem, but it would surely be a step in the right direction.

The Future of Civics Education in Israel

Originally published in the Daily Beast on April 26, 2013.

The Israeli Finance Ministry’s new budget proposal states, among other things, that ultra-Orthodox schools will need to dedicate at least 55 percent of school hours to teaching the Ministry’s core curriculum if they wish to receive any state funds.

Though there are many serious, substantive problems in Israeli education that necessitate reform, and not all of them will be remedied by this new proposal, the bill does plan to address one fundamental problem facing the future of a democratic Israeli citizenry: civic education.

This past summer I traveled to Israel to learn more about how they teach civic education. I wanted to understand if and how the Israeli government fosters a sense of civic solidarity amongst Israelis who are divided into sometimes quite distinct public schools. Public schools, from a Durkheimian sociological perspective, are institutions meant to cultivate citizens—individuals with a shared understanding of norms, values and expectations of their society.

Within Israeli public education there exist four main school systems: an ultra-Orthodox system, a national religious system, a secular system and an Arab system. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the total number of students in the education system is expected to grow from 1.579 million students in 2013 to 1.695 million students by 2017—an increase of approximately 7.3 percent, at an annual growth rate of 1.83 percent.

The ultra-Orthodox student population is the fastest growing in Israel, with an average annual growth rate of 5.7 percent. The Arab student population, with an average annual growth of 3.4 percent, is the second fastest growing demographic. It is projected that by 2017, ultra-Orthodox and Arab students will make up 44 percent of all Israeli students. By comparison, the secular education system showed an annual growth rate of 0.1 percent.

The Executive Director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Research in Israel, Dr. Dan Ben-David, has been studying these population trends. If Ben-David’s findings continue on their current trajectory, it is projected that by the year 2040, 78 percent of primary school students will study in either ultra-Orthodox or Arab school systems.

There is nothing wrong with a changing demography, but it is important to ensure that there is an educational structure in place to prepare any and all citizens to participate in democratic society. As it stands now, ultra-Orthodox students are the only segment of Israeli society not required to formally study civics; this includes topics like minority rights, free speech and voting. The democratic future of Israel is already at risk, and this seems to add yet another unhelpful variable.

When I asked a representative from the Ministry of Education if this seems to present a great future challenge for socializing citizens, she replied, “Oh yes. It’s a big problem. But there are lot of politics involved so it is very hard to change.”

However, it seems as though the politics might indeed be changing. Newly appointed Education Minister Shai Piron said recently that he would refuse to fund institutions that do not teach civics, math and English. He declared, “The State cannot fund something that goes against its interests.

To be sure, organizations are already coming out to say that the proposal does not go far enough. Hiddush, an NGO that promotes the separation of synagogue and state, has criticized the bill, saying that it’s essentially “meaningless” because schools would only have to integrate 4-6 hours a week of core curriculum—an hour or less a day. Given that the core curriculum includes subjects like English, mathematics, science and Hebrew, it is unclear how these would be divided, and what role civics would play in such a division.

In Israel, policymakers are looking for a more equitable way to share both the resources from, and the maintenance of, a modern Western society. Addressing the role that the ultra-Orthodox play is a key step in that process. But when thinking about Israel’s future, it is important that civics be strongly prioritized as well. It is, arguably, most “core” of all.

A small step toward safeguarding Facebook privacy

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 20, 2013.

Millions of people put their lives on Facebook, but thanks to the site’s convoluted and ever-changing privacy policies, they often have little idea who else can see the information they provide or what the company itself is doing with all the personal data it collects. For that reason, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler’s effort as president of the National Association of Attorneys General to partner with Facebook on a public information campaign is welcome — so long as it doesn’t give the public the impression that the problem of Facebook privacy has been solved.

On Facebook, people publish information about what they like, where they live, where they work, what their relationships are and how to contact them. People also frequently exchange personal and private messages.

Online predators, thieves and frauds have a keen interest in collecting as much personal data as they can to harm, rob or impersonate individuals. Employers and admissions officers actively seek out information that many applicants likely never thought would be public. And Facebook itself makes money from the use of the personal data it collects in ways that users may not realize or appreciate.

The threats to privacy in the digital age have clearly outpaced the government’s regulatory framework. The dominant legislation that governs Internet privacy, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, was written in 1986, before social-networking sites like Facebook were even conceived. The ECPA says that the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, applies to digital files — but only if they are not given to a third party server. Given that Facebook is a third party server with some of our most private information, the law is of little use. For the time being, safeguarding privacy is up to individual users.

The educational campaign Mr. Gansler helped arrange will consist of tips and resources to help clarify some commonly misunderstood privacy questions. The information will be available both on the websites of attorney general across the country and, more importantly, on Facebook itself. Tips include things like, “Think before you tag and check what you are tagged in,” and “Check your audience before you post.”

Soon, public service announcements, starring various attorneys general and Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, will also appear on users’ news feeds, in the way that sponsored advertisements often do. That’s important because the information will be more likely to be seen by those who need it most.

It’s a nice idea, but we can’t help but observe that this is also a pretty sweet arrangement for Mr. Gansler, a man with plans to run for governor next year, and for the attorneys general in 49 other states, many of whom likely have similar ambitions. It’s unclear what their presence adds to the effort.

Indeed, the arrangement poses a greater risk than the possibility that Mr. Gansler will get a little free publicity. The use of his image — or that of one of his colleagues from another state — may suggest to the public that the government is giving its sanction to Facebook’s privacy policies or even playing some role in regulating them. If so, a campaign to get people to be more careful in their online activities might have the opposite effect.

After all, the greatest perpetrator of privacy confusion is often Facebook itself; the company’s practice of manipulating privacy settings, even after users have taken the time to set them, can become a confounding puzzle and headache. Facebook’s “targeted advertisements” are very often a result of information users hadn’t realized they released.

Mr. Gansler says he raised the issue of Facebook’s frequent privacy policy changes, but the site has made no commitment to mend its ways. The partnership, it seems, only goes so far. If this is a step in the right direction, it is a small one that serves to underscore the need for a much broader conversation about these issues.

Common sense on Plan B.

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 9, 2013.

Last week, a federal district judge in New York ruled that girls younger than 17 should be allowed to purchase the Plan B contraceptive pill over the counter. Unlike the Obama administration, Judge Edward Korman got this one right. The 2011 decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to restrict access for younger girls not only denied them a safe and legal means to prevent unwanted pregnancy but ignored all scientific evidence that supported its access.

Emergency contraceptive pills, commonly known as “Plan B,” are drugs that work to prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after sexual intercourse. Plan B, which has been available by prescription since 1999, contains levonorgestrel, a synthetic version of the hormone progestin. Levonorgestrel has been used in birth control pills for more than 35 years; Plan B contains a higher dose and is taken as two separate doses 12 hours apart.

Given that teen pregnancy rates in the United States, while declining, are still high for an industrialized nation, the need for easier access to all forms of safe and effective contraception is great. And there is no question that Plan B is safe; aspirin is more dangerous and susceptible to misuse. For that reason, the Food and Drug Administration recommended in 2011 that Plan B be made available over the counter without a prescription.

Nonetheless, President Barack Obama defended Ms. Sebelius’ decision to reject the FDA recommendation, saying at the time that he believed the nation should exercise “common sense” when deciding what medicines to allow over the counter. White House spokesman Jay Carney reiterated that line on Friday, again calling it a “common-sense approach.”

Common sense would be to make decisions based on reputable scientific research, as Mr. Obama had pledged to do during his first inaugural address, when he said he would “restore science to its rightful place” in policymaking. Instead, “common-sense” effectively means “compromise” with those whose real agenda is to erode access to contraception and those who mistakenly think Plan B has something to do with abortion.

Plan B is not an abortion pill, like RU-486, which must be administered in a doctor’s office. Instead, it prevents the fertilization of an egg, which is why it must be used within about 120 hours of intercourse. Nonetheless, Plan B has become a target of abortion-rights foes and those who think that increasing access to contraception somehow leads to promiscuity.

The Obama administration’s decision to reject the Food and Drug Administration’s advice on Plan B was a surprising one for a president who has otherwise done much good for the cause of women’s health care. Under the Affordable Care Act, women can now receive free birth control; they can get preventive services like mammograms, new baby care and well-child visits without co-pays; and there are greater crackdowns on discriminatory insurance premiums based on gender.

The only conceivable explanation for the president’s decision was that it was an attempt, amid a re-election campaign, to avoid fueling the trumped-up narrative that his efforts to extend contraception access amounted to a “war on religion.” Judge Korman called the ban “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent.” His decision was supported by scientists, experts, women’s reproductive health groups and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which had advised its members to issue blanket Plan B prescriptions to teen girls as a means to get around the Obama administration policy.

This ruling comes at a time when women’s reproductive rights are being put at risk in state houses across the country. North Dakota recently passed legislation to ban any abortion after six weeks, the strictest such measure in the nation. It trumped legislation passed in Arkansas earlier this year to ban abortions in the 12th week of pregnancy, and it is about to be leapfrogged by a Kansas bill that defines life as beginning at fertilization.

It is unclear yet whether the Obama administration will try to fight the Plan B ruling. Mr. Carney said in a news conference that the president’s opinion “has not changed.” But now, the president doesn’t even have the excuse of political expediency to justify his position. The science is clear, and so are the public health benefits of making Plan B widely available. The president should let this decision stand.

The Oft-Ignored Issue of Homelessness

Originally published in the JHU Politik on April 8th, 2013.

Sometimes wars, thousands of miles away, can seem more pressing than the thousands of cold and hungry people sleeping on the streets of our communities. Too often people feel there is little they can do to actually affect long-term structural housing change. This view, while popular, is wrong.

In many ways, the Obama administration has taken some innovative steps towards ending homelessness. In 2009 the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) was created; it allocated funds to state and local governments to keep individuals and families in their homes and to help people who were already homeless find affordable housing. This $1.5 billion program, which was included in the $840 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, worked to rehouse people, keep others off the streets with rental assistance, and provide emergency housing, security deposits, moving expenses, and other means of temporary aid. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), an independent agency within the executive branch, and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have been leading these efforts.

Over the past four years, the number of chronically homeless people—an at-risk population often in need of mental and physical health services—fell about seven percent in 2011 and more than 19 percent since 2007. Homelessness among veterans declined more than seven percent in 2011 and 17 percent since 2009. These drops are significant, and HPRP marked the first time that such a large amount of federal funds were made available for homelessness prevention at the national level. Real tangible progress can be seen when money is invested into the prevention and eradication of homelessness. In the past five years, HUD and USICH increased the number of available beds in emergency shelters by about 15 percent, and the number of beds in longer term housing by almost 50 percent. Despite decreases among particularly at-risk individuals and military veterans, homelessness has increased among families and young people, including college graduates. The Government’s partial success highlights the need for further investment into preventing this eminently avoidable problem.

Currently, tens of thousands of underemployed and unemployed young adults between the ages of 18-24, are struggling to afford shelter; the recession has left workers in this age bracket with the highest unemployment rate of all adults. Specific information on this population is difficult to obtain-most cities have not made special efforts to identify young people who tend to avoid ordinary shelters. However, the Obama administration has begun an information gathering initiative with nine communities to seek out those young adults who live without a consistent home address. In 2011, Los Angeles attempted a count of young adults living on the street and found 3,600—however, the city had shelter capacity for only 17 percent of them.Additionally there were approximately 64,000 more families in shelters in 2011 than in 2007—an increase of about 13 percent. Also the number of families with children in “worst case” housing situations—meaning that they spend more than half of their income on housing or that they live in dangerous, substandard buildings—rose to 3.3 million from 2.2 million. Many of these families are just one financial obstacle away from losing their homes.

To be sure, some, particularly young adults, are often hesitant to reach out for governmental help. Additionally, there are others, even right here in Baltimore, who resist pressure to relocate from the streets into shelters or low-quality housing.

Mark Johnston, HUD’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, told the New York Times that homelessness could be effectively eradicated in the United States at an annual cost of approximately $20 billion. The housing department’s budget for addressing homelessness is currently around $1.9 billion. While the Obama Administration has made the right choice in extending the homelessness prevention program, it is unfortunately running on less funding than the administration’s goals require.

“The evidence is clear that every dollar we spend on those programs that help find a stable home for our homeless neighbors not only saves money but quite literally saves lives,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.

Ultimately, to address homelessness we must first realize that we indeed can.

AP makes ‘illegals’ illegal

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 5th, 2013.

This week the AP Stylebook, the standardized style guide for newspapers and other publications across the United States, announced that no longer, under their rules, will it be acceptable to use the term “illegal immigrant.” AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explained that the term “illegal” is incorrect when labeling people and “should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

The change, proponents argue, is necessary because labeling individuals as “illegals” or “illegal” is an unfair designation that no other criminal or civil offender in this country receives. Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter and immigrant activist, has called the term “illegal immigrant” dehumanizing. In a Fox News Latino survey conducted last year, nearly half of Latino voters responded that they find the term “illegal immigrant” offensive.

About two months ago a similar political AP Style debate played out with regard to same-sex marriages. An internal memo was leaked that said the AP would use “couples or partners to describe people in civil unions or same-sex marriages” as opposed to the terms “husband” and “wife.” This separate-but-equal discourse for legal same-sex marriages drew the ire of the gay community, causing the AP to change its position within the week.

These questions of language have real ramifications; the way that ideas are presented in the press impacts how people understand and relate to the issues, and the effort to avoid potentially loaded terms is never-ending.

For example, in the case of immigrants who enter the country illegally, the AP also now advises journalists to avoid the term “undocumented.” AP argues that often these individuals do hold some sort of documentation, therefore it’s inaccurate to assert otherwise. And in the case of the gay community, in November AP editors advised the press to avoid the term “homophobia” because, in their view, homophobia implies that anti-gay sentiment is based in irrational fear. AP now encourages journalists to use the term “anti-gay bigotry” instead.

(At The Baltimore Sun, the terms “illegal immigrants” and “homophobia” are still acceptable.)

The AP is not alone in revising its language related to immigration; New York Times officials have also said they also want to revise their style book to promote a more nuanced immigration discourse. But nuance may be the enemy of brevity. The AP’s new guidelines say, “Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?”

Certainly it’s important to find ways to describe such divisive political issues that is both accurate and neutral, but it can also lead to language that is clunky or, worse yet, not easily understood. Moreover, the effort to avoid potentially freighted language is almost inevitably viewed by those involved in the debate as taking sides. The AP’s effort to avoid controversy in its stylebook has often only courted it instead. In a highly polarized society, it may simply be impossible to find terms that please everyone.

The cost of sexually transmitted disease.

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 1, 2013.

Doctors and patients alike are often uncomfortable talking about sexual health and sexually transmitted disease. But a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows that this squeamishness costs society millions of dollars spent trying to treat or cure diseases that could have been prevented, vaccinated against, screened for or detected at an earlier stage of development.

According to the CDC, about 19 million Americans each year are affected by sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Young people, ages 15-24, are disproportionately affected; they account for 50 percent of all new sexually transmitted infections despite representing just 25 percent of the total sexually active population.

The problem is particularly acute in Maryland, which has some of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections in the country. Maryland ranks 9th highest among the 50 states in cumulative reported AIDS cases and 5th highest for syphilis, with signs that the problem is getting worse. Maryland has seen an upward trend of syphilis cases since 2002.

Conservative estimates from this CDC report show that the lifetime cost of treating eight of the most common STIs contracted in one year is $15.6 billion. Some STIs, like HIV require life-long therapy, and others, like the human papillomavirus, better known as HPV, can lead to cancer, which also demands costly treatment. Even among the STIs that are curable, the annual cost of treatment is $742 million. Chlamydia is the most common curable STI, with over 1 million cases reported each year.

These costs are almost entirely avoidable, but we also are operating in a culture where talking frankly about sex and its risks is not encouraged enough. The debates over sex education and the distribution of condoms in schools are well known, but a less obvious culprit in the spread of sexually transmitted infections is the failing of the health care system. According to a report from the National Cancer Institute, major hurdles to vaccination for example, are inadequate provider recommendations, a broken reminder system for urging patients to complete their doses, and concerns over cost and coverage.

According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2010 only 30 percent of American girls had received all three CDC-recommended doses of the HPV vaccines. Comparatively, in Canada, 50 percent to 85 percent of girls were vaccinated, and in the United Kingdom and Australia well over 70 percent of girls received the vaccination. These countries make efforts to provide access and affordable coverage but do not require the vaccine. The U.S. should follow suit and actively work to curb health care costs with preventative services. In 2007, Maryland established a task force to make recommendations for a state plan for the HPV vaccine, including possible requirements, cost and education efforts, but nothing came of it, and the task force was disbanded in 2009.

A positive development in the effort to stop the spread of STIs came in November, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed panel of scientists and medical professionals, made a new recommendation that every American between the ages of 15 and 65 be tested for HIV. Because the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover the preventative services that are recommended by this task force, regular HIV testing will now be covered as part of a routine check-up.

The idea that people would be tested for HIV just as routinely as they are screened for high blood pressure of cholesterol is promising, but it will only work if doctors and patients are willing to have what is often an uncomfortable discussion.

“Talking about [STIs and risk] at all in the ACA is big because it’s often not in the conversation,” said Barbara Conrad, chief of the Center for STI Prevention at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “People don’t talk about things before they become real problems.”

The onus to change that will be on both doctors and patients, Ms. Conrad said. Patients may be too shy to raise the issue on their own, and doctors, pressured by the time constraints of medical visits, may not bring it up either.

We need to do better. For many, talking openly about sex, even with a doctor, may seem like a taboo. But that taboo hurts our economy and public health.

Is gay marriage a gateway issue for political activism?

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on March 29, 2013.

This week, as the Supreme Court took up two historic cases pertaining to same-sex marriage, it’s been an exciting time to be a college student. Huge numbers of young people on Facebook and Twitter continue to post pictures and status updates in support of marriage equality. Kids proudly walk around campus sporting red clothing in support of the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that seeks to promote equal rights for gays, lesbians, transgender people and bisexuals. The enthusiasm, from the quad to the blogosphere, is infectious and inspiring.

“As an LGBT student at Hopkins, I have been truly humbled by the way that my fellow students have rallied around this issue,” said Danielle Stern, who, like me, is a junior at Johns Hopkins University. “Hopkins isn’t a campus where students get excited easily.”

For so many of us, this feels like our civil rights moment. We grew up studying the struggles of our great-grandparents, our grandparents and our parents who fought for racial equality and social justice. But for me and for my peers, who grew up in an era marked by questionable wars in the Middle East, which in turn seemed to promote Islamophobia at home, politics seemed to represent a smarmy, dark, and at best, unengaging enterprise.

But suddenly there is an issue that people can get excited about. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 81 percent of 18-29 year olds support marriage equality. And that figure, though staggering to some, is not all that surprising. We’re the generation that grew up with Ellen Degeneres, Will and Grace, Anderson Cooper and Frank Ocean. Gay role models today exist in almost every arena. Not supporting gay rights seems so at odds with everything we’ve grown up with. In the eyes of the youth, it’s bigotry, prejudice and intolerance.

As I watch my friends from the left and right get their first taste of political activism in support of marriage equality, I wonder, could this type of involvement be here to stay?

In some respects, it is hard to imagine another type of issue that could garner such massive, broad-based support, yet political science tells us that political participation begets more political participation. Could gay marriage be the “gateway issue” for more kids to engage in the politics?

Penn State political scientist Eric Plutzer found that often the most motivating factor for voters to turn out to the polls is simply that they have developed the habit to vote before. “Interest does not lead to participation,” Mr. Plutzer said. “Rather, participation promotes interest.” In other words, perhaps the most successful way to get Americans to vote throughout their lifetimes is to get them to vote for their first time.

To be sure, young people today aren’t citing gay marriage as their top issue at the voting booth. According to research conducted by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), only 3.8 percent of young voters named gay rights as their top issue in the 2012 presidential election. The vast majority of voters, both young and old, cited the economy and jobs as being most important to them.

But could simply participating in this historic moment along with the rest of the 81 percent in my generation be enough to ignite further participation down the road? We are given the opportunity to see political engagement at its best, and maybe the consequences will be lasting.

CIRCLE Director Peter Levine thinks there is indeed a chance gay rights could be that gateway issue. “While there isn’t clear research that political organizing leads to more political organizing, the evidence from the voting world is pretty suggestive,” he said. “We know once you get people voting, it often leads to more voting.”

Will my generation move from gay rights to the environment or some other big issue? Time will tell. For now, I will enjoy this warm moment in history, as youth across the United States take part in the political process that will inevitably, and assuredly, give the gay community the rights they so very much deserve. And hopefully, this unique issue, which touched so many of us personally, will keep many more of us involved in the future.