Coming Apart focuses on the ever-increasing differences between Murray’s “new” upper and lower classes, which developed after 1960 because of the large premium placed on intellectual ability in the workplace. The new upper class is made up of college graduates who work in managerial positions or professional occupations and belong to the top 5 percent of all income earners. Murray’s new lower class comprises working-age men who are unemployed or underemployed and don’t make enough by themselves to put a household of two above the poverty line, single mother with minor-aged children, and an ill-defined group of men and women who, as Murray puts it, are “disconnected from the matrix of community life.” This lower class comprises close to 20 percent of the American population, and they are unsurprisingly located in the poorest neighborhoods.

Murray then identifies four “founding virtues” of America incorporating marriage, industriousness, religion, and honesty. He declares the “four aspects of American life were so completely accepted as essential that, for practical purposes, you would be hard put to find an eighteenth-century founder or nineteenth-century commentator who dissented from any of them.” Charles Murray’s premise in Coming Apart is that the decline of the four founding virtues among the people of the new lower class has contributed to their socioeconomic stagnation, while the preservation of those values among the people of the new upper class produces their prosperity.

Murray’s tale about the decline of his four founding virtues digs deep into the underlying causes of socioeconomic inequality. He chose his four virtues well for the most part, although I do not think Murray should have treated them all equally. Honesty and industriousness form the weakest part of his argument because they are more abstract than marriage and religiosity. Murray does have facts and figures to support his claim that honesty and industriousness are in decline, but he cannot make many concrete observations because it is difficult to quantify them. The institutions of marriage and religion are much more important because it is easier to cede that their decline precipitated the deterioration in honesty and industriousness.

Murray’s argument concerning marriage is a revelation because he takes many different statistics that seem relatively harmless on their own and shows how disastrous their combined effect has been for the United States. Marriage rates have fallen in everywhere in our society, but while the rate seems to have stabilized among the upper class, it has continued to decline in the lower class. The number of people in the lower class who are divorced or have never been married has skyrocketed since 1960, and thus many children are born and raised in single-parent households. There are those who argue that single parents can be just as effective at raising a child as a two parents, but even they cannot deny that lower class children raised by single mothers generally have access to fewer resources and opportunities as their peers with two parents. This is an enormous problem because children do not learn vital lessons that helped preceding generations get ahead. The decline of marriage also ties in well with the decline of religiosity because they both began their deterioration at around the same time. In fact, it could be argued that declining religiousness of the American population contributed to the decline in marriage because people felt it was less necessary to get married as the taboo against having children out of wedlock disappeared.

Murray provides a refutation of the commonly held misconception that poorer working class whites are more religious than their upper class counterparts. Citing evidence gathered in the General Social Survey distributed since the 1970s, Murray shows that while the amount of people in the upper and lower classes who consider themselves to be either religious or secular is about the same, the percentage of people in the upper class who regularly attend a worship service is about 15 percent higher than in the lower class. Since organized religion provides a weekly refresher course on the importance of good behavior to followers, the particularly sharp decline in religiosity in both classes might help explain the increase in all types of crimes. The situation in the lower class is worse because there has been a correspondingly larger decrease in religiosity.

American society has changed greatly in the last several decades due to the decline of Murray’s founding virtues. The decline disproportionately affected the lower class, and the upper class is understandably drifting apart from the rest of society. The members of both classes tend to live in clusters of communities with people similar to them. Murray succinctly points out the problem with this when he says “It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisors cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers.” Members of the upper class tend to make far-reaching decisions that affect members of all other classes, but how can they make decisions that benefit people they do not understand? Unless members of the new upper class make a conscious effort to address their increasing separation from the lower class, no amount of welfare or social programs will be able to resolve the issue of income inequality.

While concerns over North Korea’s nuclear program dominate the news media, China’s repatriation policy deserves more attention. Such inquiry would provide insight into the diplomatic difficulties of the Korean peninsula, particularly regarding human rights. Indeed, China’s rhetoric defending its longstanding repatriation policy, as well as the views of North Korean defectors, can provide a better understanding of life inside the world’s most closed-off country and what should be done for those who escape.

Against All Odds: The Journey to China

The U.S. State Department estimates that there are currently tens of thousands of escaped North Koreans hiding in China. Food shortages, deteriorating humanitarian conditions, and human rights violations are all factors that drive North Koreans to cross the Sino-D.P.R.K. border. To escape, they have to swim across the Tumen River while avoiding detection by both D.P.R.K. and Chinese border security. This can involve bribing border guards, sneaking between patrols, and maneuvering through barbed electric fences. Once across the border, criminal organizations often exploit these vulnerable North Korean refugees. Estimates suggest that over half of the North Korean women who cross into China are sexually trafficked as brides to rural Chinese men.

In China, many North Korean migrants take on menial, low-paying jobs. Some hope to make money to bring back to their families in North Korea. Others hope to eventually gain asylum in South Korea or the United States by traveling through an “underground railroad” to Southeast Asia or Mongolia. All of these migrants live in fear of detection by the Chinese authorities with the possibility of severe punishment looming if sent back to the D.P.R.K.

Repatriated North Koreans are sent to temporary labor camps where they are often interrogated and tortured to glean information about their time in China. If found guilty of having associated with Christian NGO workers while in China, these repatriates face harsher punishments, such as execution or long sentences in a labor camp. Several reports indicate that trafficked pregnant women are forced to abort their half-Chinese babies when sent back to North Korea. Those who risk escaping into China also risk the lives of their families, as three generations of a North Korean’s family are punished for such behavior.

More than 20,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the 1990s and approximately 130 defectors have permanently settled in the United States. The information available about the situation on the Sino-D.P.R.K. border largely comes from personal accounts told by North Korean defectors who make it out of China.

The Chinese repatriation policy of North Korean refugees exacerbates human rights problems on the Korean peninsula by preventing defectors from seeking political asylum and by preventing the United Nations Refugee Agency from accessing the border region. The policy also allows North Korea to commit additional human rights violations against those who are returned.

Human Rights Perspective

The protests surrounding the repatriation of the 31 refugees in March 2012 brought greater awareness to the plight faced by those who seek to escape North Korea. Those protesting outside of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul assert that North Koreans who cross the border into China should be given official refugee status. Human rights activists point to China’s membership in the UN, which obligates them to abide by the 1951 Refugee Convention agreement of “non-refoulement” in which “no contracting State shall expel or return a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened.”

Many North Korean defectors were present at the protests in March, sharing their stories and calling upon South Koreans to object to China’s current practices. One anonymous North Korean defector told HPR about his hope to raise awareness in South Korea through music and film.

Human rights advocates hope that China will give in to international pressure and disband their repatriation policy or at least allow the UNHCR to provide humanitarian assistance in the region. Kyung-Seo Park, former South Korean Ambassador for Human Rights, told the HPR that he believes Chinese policies towards North Korean migrants will not last if pressure from the international community continues to build. He cautioned, “In pressuring the Chinese on this issue, we should not take an aggressive stance, but should try to understand the Chinese difficulties.” Indeed, the international human rights community needs to understand China’s point of view if it hopes to seriously pressure China to change its longstanding policy.

China’s Repatriation Policy

Chinese officials have long rejected the assertion that North Koreans who cross the border into China meet the definition of “refugees.” Instead, they refer to the border-crossers as “economic migrants,” which allows them to avoid abiding by the UN’s principle of non-refoulement. Yet, regardless of why these North Koreans cross the border, many fit the definition of refugee sur place due to the harsh punishments they face when sent back to North Korea.

China has enforced its repatriation policy since the 1990s, when the flow of North Korean refugees increased due to the North Korean famine, which killed an estimated one million people. This constancy in the Chinese policy contrasts with South Korea’s delayed articulation of their views on this issue. During the Sunshine Policy years of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003) and President Roh Moo-hyn (2003-2008), South Koreans remained silent regarding the repatriation of North Koreans. Up until the recent protests, South Koreans have not shown major objection to this policy.

Chinese policies towards North Korean migrants are characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party’s continual struggle to control internal and external migration, population growth, and ethnic minorities along China’s borders. In addition, nationalist complications shape China’s refusal to admit Koreans into its border area, the Yanbian Autonomous Zone. An estimated one million ethnic Koreans already live in this area, which some Korean nationalists in South Korea claim as their own.

Many speculate that the Chinese are reluctant to support reunification of the Korean peninsula, as they would prefer to keep North Korea as a buffer zone separating China from the U.S.-influenced South Korea. Likewise, China wants to avoid a large inflow of refugees, which it believes could lead to regional instability. Indeed, the CCP’s People’s Daily, has written that “attempting to ‘refugee-ize,’ internationalize or politicize this problem” of North Korean refugees would be futile.

North Korean Defectors and the Future of the Korean Peninsula

Some had hoped that current leader Kim Jong Un, exposed to the outside world while studying in Switzerland, would have more concern for the North Korean people than his father. However, Kim Jong Un’s order that guards should shoot-to-kill when patrolling the border, as well as his crackdown on the possession of illegal Chinese cell phones, does not forebode well.

China has also responded by tightening its own border-security. According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, China has recently installed silent alarm systems in the houses of a Chinese border town to encourage residents to inform the police if they encounter North Korean escapees.

Nevertheless, the South Koreans’ recent protest of China’s repatriation policy has brought more attention to the people who can play an important role in the shaping of the future of the Korean peninsula. North Korean defectors are the ones currently standing up for the oppressed still living in North Korea. Their insights into a very secretive country are valuable in improving outside knowledge of what goes on inside the D.P.R.K. Even more, their experience living in both North Korea and South Korea is essential to hopes for future Korean unification.

But then Obama actually became president, plopping on the laurels of bureaucracy, and though he’s still the same Obama, the spark is gone. The excitement of possibility no longer exists, because what was then possible now is already a reality.

Obama won. Turns out he’s just another president.

But how, then, is Hillary Clinton suddenly cool?

It’s the same Clinton personality that many abhorred four years ago. Cold? Check. Calculating? Check. A woman growing older in public? Some Republicans definitely made that clear. Gendered epithets? Those, too, played an unfortunately large role.

But now, the same Hillary is a meme – in the form of the glorious but short-lived Tumblr TextsFromHillary. Her seemingly distant, disconnected, indifferent persona – shattered by a tear in ’08 – is now what makes her cool. Clinton texts. On a smartphone. Wearing shades indoors. She snaps back at a variety of celebrities, showing her seemingly effortless firm handle on global diplomacy. There’s Hillary Clinton, “running the world”, and she makes it look easy.

The TextsFromHillary Clinton is a woman who has climbed to where she is through hard work, and knows that she is good at what she does. The kicker is that the public knows it too. Hillary Clinton comes off as cool, as opposed to cold, because Tumblr users see her as a ridiculously accomplished woman who has earned the right to show pretenders their place – this shown by the fact that the response to the site was so large, with thousands of Twitter and Facebook followers on top of the Tumblr reaction.

Clinton in Tumblr form represents a powerful femininity which transcends unequal treatment. When a joke comes in about her sartorial style – in this case, her scrunchie – it is her very own submission to the site. The Tumblr Clinton is able to make fun of John Boehner’s tears, and deflect Sarah Palin’s desires to be seen as an equal in accomplishment. This version of Clinton is comfortable in her skin, and a great example for women (and men) around the nation for that reason. Once you get to the point where you are on a first name basis with foreign leaders, you are actually totally allowed to wear sunglasses on a plane. And even wear a scrunchie.

Hillary Clinton, in essence, has won. Her newfound viral meme fame – another fifteen minutes to tack on to her well-earned decades – demonstrates that her story can be retold, her narrative reframed – and confirms the view that Clinton is still one of the “most famous but least known” figures in America.

The future Brooks is looking for.

From “Sam Spade at Starbucks”:

It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it. That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won’t add up to much.

Yesterday the NY Times ran a David Brooks op-ed on the limited worldview of “wonderful young” idealists. Brooks praises these optimistic people for the “uplifting” good they do in the world but proceeds to lay out the limitations of their “hip” service religion, namely that NGOs and microfinance can only go so far in helping people. For Brooks, these idealists do not care enough about politics, the process whereby corruption, venality, and disorder in the government and civil society are confronted and solved. He proposes rough and tumble noir hero Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon as a new paradigm for these well-intentioned but misguided philanthropists who are only able to do so much good in the current format of social entrepreneurship and apolitical involvement. Spade is reticent, allergic to self-righteousness and appears unfeeling, but he is motivated by a disillusioned sense of honor. He stands for a basic sense of good order, the idea that crime should be punished, and that bad behavior shouldn’t go uncorrected.

Brooks points out that these traits are not only lacking in idealist culture but sorely needed if the good intentioned young men and women of today are going to solve the world’s problems tomorrow. On behalf of said good intentioned idealists, I feel that Mr. Brooks’s piece deserves a response.

Brooks makes a great point. You cannot avoid politics. Microloans only help so long as a stable economy exists for entrepreneurs to enter into. Predation of aid funds by the government and elite in developing nations sees billions of dollars diverted from needy people to Swiss bank accounts. These are issues that, as Brooks points out, must be dealt with if genuine societal change is going to come to those in need.

Yet, the article’s criticism is in my opinion misplaced. It does not give enough credit to the egalitarianism of the NGO. In a world where increasing expertization demands years of experience and expensive degrees, the nonprofit sector offers millions of people the chance to go out into the world and do something. Qualifications pale in importance next to a commitment to alleviating human suffering.

Herein lies the purpose of this massive coterie of NGOs: the alleviation of human suffering. Brooks is correct to point out that the government is the only way to bring about long term solutions, but misses the fact that many NGOs are not looking at the long term. They see millions of people suffering from disease, poverty, or abuse, and attempt to treat on an individual or local level. Their mission, perhaps best incapsulated by Doctor’s Without Borders, is to help people in need, seeing all people as people rather than just statistics. These idealists read articles about 400,000 children dying of famine in the Horn of Africa, and see them as 400,000 distinct individuals instead of some amorphous mass of suffering. Conversely, within the bureaucratized system of governance, computability often trumps humanity.

Example from Rwanda 1994:

Ahead of their arrival, Dallaire says he got a phone call. A U.S. officer was wondering precisely how many Rwandans had died. Dallier was puzzled and asked why he wanted to know. ‘We are doing our calculations back here,’ the U.S. Officer said, ‘and one American casualty is worth about 85,000 Rwandan dead.” - Samantha Power

Brooks mistakes the apolitical nature of NGOs as apathy without taking into account the importance of neutrality in their mission. Politicized organizations often lose access to the people they are trying to help along ideological grounds, especially in warzones. NGOs are apolitical because it allows them to operate wherever people are suffering. You cannot criticize idealists in these organizations for avoiding politics without acknowledging how essential (and pragmatic0 this is to their line of work.

That said, Brooks is correct in pointing out the limitations of apolitical action. People defer to the international bodies in place too much. The UN, World Bank, and IMF (among others) have been left to deal with the political fallout of struggling nations while the majority of manpower has gone into short term fixes.

Perhaps the solution is for hybrid NGO-lobbyist-consultant organizations to emerge, potentially following the model of Amnesty International, that push international actors to take firmer stances on structural flaws in the world system (i.e. the international arms trade). This is the work I see policy students doing, mainly because they have the educational clout to be taken seriously as “experts.”  This work is not something that should be confused with what aid organizations do.

Politics is the ultimate solution to the big problems out there, but operating on a regional or national level cannot solve all of the world’s problems. Laws are only effective if people follow them, and as the continued plight of women in Pakistan has shown, political solutions can only extend as far as local enforcement is willing to take them. Thus NGOs and governments need to work in tandem to tackle major problems. Brooks brings up a great point but misses the existence of this dichotomy in how the world deals with problems. NGOs look to help suffering people on an individual level. Governments look to create the structures whereby these changes become norms.

We should encourage more promising students to take the necessary next steps to make policy changes, perhaps highlighting the steps needed to work as a civil or international servant. We need both young idealists and young realists working together to solve the world’s problems.

Photocredit: Council on Foreign Relations

How far has the Karzai Administration come?

To understand the Afghan government’s hopes for the reconciliation movement, it is first critical to understand the challenges that Afghan women have faced. The Taliban’s war on women extended far and wide. With no constitution or rule of law, municipal authorities used the Taliban’s interpretation of Shari’a law. Severe restrictions on movement, dress and work were in place: women were forced to wear the burqa, were not allowed to wear high-heeled shoes or to be seen in public without a male blood relative and were largely prohibited from working. A woman was expected to be a homemaker that was “neither seen nor heard.” Since women were not allowed out in public, women’s physical and mental health suffered tremendously under the Taliban. With no judicial system but their own, the Taliban “terrorized the city of Kabul by publicly punishing alleged wrongdoers in the Kabul sports stadium and requiring public attendance at the floggings, shootings, hangings, beheadings, and amputations,” says Amnesty International.

President Hamid Karzai’s rise to power in 2001 brought hope to Afghanistan. Karzai was instrumental in reforming the Afghan state and in passing the 2003 Afghan Constitution. On his second Inauguration Day in 2009, Karzai promised to rid the country of corruption and create a safe environment for each Afghan. However, Karzai’s rhetoric is far from the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. Though women have returned to public life and NGOs have been invaluable in providing women with support, Karzai has failed on protecting women’s rights on several fronts. For example, Karzai approved a law in 2009 that, according to the UN, sanctioned marital rape. In March 2009, he approved the Shi’a Personal Status Law, which denied Shiite women numerous rights, including child custody and freedom of movement. Two convicted gang rapists were even granted presidential pardons. Conclusively, Karzai has been unable to resist pressures from radicals within the country, making the possibility of reconciliation even more concerning for the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The Risks of Reconciliation

What does reconciliation entail?

In June 2010, Karzai made a speech imploring the “dear Taliban” to be “welcome on their own soil” and “come to us,” explaining that, “[The Taliban] are normal people. They are just like you.” Political reconciliation would allow the integration of the Taliban into the parliament and local governing bodies like the Loya Jirga. Heather Barr, the Afghanistan analyst for Human Rights Watch, speaking to the HPR from Kabul, believes that the push towards reconciliation started about a year ago, when “the international community, specifically the US, suddenly started to sound very serious about leaving by 2014.” Few have faith in the Afghan Security Forces’ ability to hold their ground without international support, particularly with the current levels of conflict as intense as they are in certain regions of the country. Karzai should be preventing those against whom there are credible criminal allegations of war crimes are excluded from the proposed reconciliation process. Unfortunately, Karzai’s recent reconciliation attempts have proceeded without these assurances for women. Instead, as reported by former Human Rights Watch Afghanistan analyst, Rachel Reid, members of the Karzai government, such as the Minister of Economy, Abdul Hade Arghandilwal, reportedly told a gathering of women leaders that they would have to “sacrifice their interests” for the sake of peace in the country. One wonders exactly how the modest gains made by women from 2003 to 2008 will possibly develop into enduring, durable rights if they are under constant attack from fundamentalist factions within the country.

How will reconciliation put women in jeopardy?

Progress in Afghanistan has not come without significant setbacks and scrutiny. Reid noted that in the last few years prominent Afghan women have been murdered in urban areas: provincial counselor and peace activist Sitara Achakzai; senior (and sole female) police commander Malalai Kakar; journalist Zakia Zaki; and Women’s Affairs director Safia Amajan, while women in rural areas receive “night letters” threatening them with violence if they choose to work with government officials. Most human rights activists believe that reconciliation with the Taliban will only worsen the problem. Esther Hyneman, a former professor of W

omen’s Studies and Gender Studies at Long Island University, and current board member of the Women for Afghan Women organization told the HPR that she believes with certainty that “women will suffer.” Women’s activists groups fear that once the Taliban sign the Reconciliation Agreement, they will disregard all its clauses, and will use their regained “political power to literally control 50% of the Afghan population, like they did when they were last in power.” Much of the progress made will either be stalled or even reversed, and that is a path that the Afghan government can certainly not go down.

So what is to be done? 

The Karzai government has been backed into a corner, but raising the white flag now would compromise everything that the Afghan government, NATO and NGOs on the ground have worked so hard to achieve in the field of women’s rights. Women in Afghanistan are not yet empowered enough that they can use arms and opium-yielding fields as leverage, which is why the Afghan government must strive to represent and defend them. The idea that women are a part of the trade-off for a more peaceful, stable Afghan democracy, however, Hyneman put it succinctly when she said, “democracy can’t exist without women’s rights.” Karzai’s rhetoric must start to match the reality of his actions; instead of backing down on the issue women’s rights, he should focus on the realistic integration of the Elimination of Violence Against Women document and the bolstering of NGO work in rural areas. Reconciliation in itself is by no means a futile policy, but the reconciliation with the Taliban, a rapidly growing, misogynistic group, would be an absolute betrayal of Afghan women.

Photo courtesy, The Guardian, UK.

Winfrey’s status as a single, childless, and extremely successful woman may remind us of a current dilemma many women struggle with: the perceived choice of whether to pursue a career or have a “traditional” family, since having both can seem daunting. Now, Oprah is not the perfect actualization of this phenomenon: she may have not wanted children and may have not faced this choice. However, it is interesting to note that one of the most influential and inspiring women on the planet whose main audience is women reflects one outcome of this choice.

Many women ponder how their career will play out when they enter the workforce and therefore begin to make career choices on the assumption that they will have children. In considering the issue of “having time” to both be a mother and have a career, women may not pursue or accept promotions in their career, even years before they have children, as a way to plan for the future. This consideration is visible in the careers women choose: women are less likely to be employed in tech start-ups science or engineering positions, which require substantial amounts of time and individual work to get off the ground. They are less likely to be published in academic journals, receive tenure, or hold fast-track and time-intensive corporate positions. Only 3.6% of women are CEOs and 13% are shareholders. Strangely enough, this does not only extend to the worlds of finance and technology. In the medical field, women make up a higher proportion of dermatologists compared to other, more time-consuming medical professions such as internal medicine. 

Women also see motherhood and childcare as a barrier to career success because of the time and development lost with maternity leave, and this belief has empirical support. The wage gap between mothers and non-mothers is currently larger than the wage gap between men and women: non-mothers earn 10% less than men, while married mothers earn 27% less and single mothers earn between 34% and 44% less than men. That averages out to working mothers making only 77 cents to a man’s dollar, and 77 cents to their childless coworkers’ 90 cents. Additionally, women face motherhood wage penalties of 9-18% per child, and a Cornell University study in 2005 showed that women without children applying for a job would earn $11,000 more than mothers with the same qualifications. These accumulated factors enforce the belief that women can’t really ‘have it all’ and must choose.

Though Oprah is an example of a successful woman without a traditional family, there are many women, both in Hollywood and otherwise, who are very successful and are married with children. Take, for example, Sheryl Sandberg, the second-in-command at Facebook and #5 on Forbes’ Most Powerful Women 2011 list. This Harvard graduate is married with two daughters and is poised to make around $1.6 billion after Facebook’s public offering. Female celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, Heidi Klum, Victoria Beckham, and Beyoncé (though she has just given birth to Blue Ivy Carter) also demonstrate the possibility of a successful work-family balance. Apart from celebrities with money and staff, many regular women, including my own mother validate that women can have both a family and career.

It is not impossible to be a successful working mother, and more women exemplify this every day. However, women perceive a choice between work and family because the two, in spite of huge leaps women have made in the past decades, still do not seem compatible. Why is this important? Women currently make up half of the workforce, even more so during the recession when more men became unemployed. In purely economic terms, it is beneficial to make women feel able to both have a career and a family so that their choice does not make productivity and the economy suffer, either by women working less or completely leaving the force. Women should also be encouraged to enter into typically “male” fields and contribute their skills and viewpoints to those industries. America’s approach to child care and alternative work arrangements for families with children, which is far behind many other industrialized countries, is a good place to start to address this issue. Though we can’t all reach Oprah Winfrey-level wealth and power, women shouldn’t have to choose between career success and family.

Roselyne Bachelot: supporter of surname equality

The French government announced last week that it would drop the title “Mademoiselle” from all its official documents.  Solidarity Minister Roselyne Bachelot claimed in support of the measure that the move would “end a form of discrimination.”  All women, married or not, would henceforth use only the title “Madame,” just as all French men use only the title “Monsieur.”  French feminist groups had been pushing for this change for a long time, arguing that a woman’s marital status was irrelevant to any of her official business. It is hard to understate the revolutionary nature this move considering the millennia old tradition of labeling women in relation to their marital status.

From a historical perspective, the practice of giving women distinct titles upon marriage dates back to ancient times. An article published online by the Iran Chamber Society on February 29 cites both fortification and treasury texts discovered at Persepolis and documents discovered at Susa Babylonia that include separate titles for married and unmarried women. The Persepolis tablets identify three different terms of reference for women, mutu, irti and duksis; these titles referred to both marital status and connection to the royal family.

By the Middle Ages, titles were differentiated in the English language as well.  ”Mrs.” is simply a contraction derived from the Middle English “maistresse,” meaning a female teacher or governess. It was originally used as a title of courtesy, but by the 15th century the term “mistress” had already come to carry negative connotations.  By the 17th century, the terms “Mrs.” and “Miss” were already in use.

French and English were not the only languages to have this demarcation of titles for women. The Germans traditionally used “Fraulein” for unmarried women and “Frau” for married women. But they led the French in removing the marital status by banning the use of “Fraulein” from official records in 1972. The Spanish still, however, officially use both “Senora” and “Senorita.” English is a bit unique in that it has introduced the third term of “Ms.,” applying to any adult woman without removing the other choices, leaving women to choose among “Miss,” “Mrs.,” or “Ms.”

It is interesting to note that some languages change a woman’s actual name to denote her marital status, not just the change of her title. For instance, last names in Lithuanian end differently depending on whether it’s a man’s surname, a married woman’s surname or an unmarried woman’s surname. Men’s surnames typically end in -us, -as, or -ys. However, the “as” would be changed to “-iene” for a man’s wife. His daughter would have a surname ending in “-aite,” although his son’s surname would be the same as his own.

There are actually countries where women used to change their first names to denote their marital status. In Macedonia, this was common until recently, and it is still practiced in small rural areas.  In addition, until the 1950s, Hungarian women dropped their own names completely and added the title “wife of” to their husband’s name. This is similar to the old fashioned American or British tradition of being known as “Mrs.” (husband’s name), a practice that is essentially extinct in the present day.

Now, in 2012, this ancient marital title system is continuing to grow obsolete after millennia of use.  Of course, in a society where women hold their own jobs, manage their own finances and often do not marry until later in life, if at all, this makes sense. A woman’s status no longer depends upon her husband but upon herself. One can also see the lessening in the significance of marital status in the diminution of the term “bastard,” as the incidence of children born out of wedlock rises as well. In France, where over half of all children are born to unwed parents, a woman’s marital status is really only a footnote in her life. It seems obvious that dropping a title that highlights only the modern ramifications of marriage would be the clear next step.

Photo credit: 20minutes.fr

Jeremy Lin is celebrated as the “humble hero from Harvard,” and passes on credit to his teammates as easily as he passes the ball to them on the court. After his 38-point night against Lakers, he spent a good portion of his postgame interview talking up Knicks forward Jared Jeffires, “I couldn’t think of anybody who’s more underrated than Jared.” Much of Lin’s unconventional strength seems to come from his leadership abilities on the court, namely his ability to understand who is a strong option and who is not, as well as his ability to facilitate other people’s success in addition to his own. He sleeps on people’s couches and considers himself a private and low-key person. His humility, boosted by a belief in the Augustinian Christian idea that men should accept their fundamental weakness of will without God, comes off as his dominant characteristic. As Knicks guard Iman Shumpert put it, “He’ll give you the clothes off his back.”

Mark Zuckerberg possesses a very different image. He is celebrated as a hyper-successful entrepreneur who cut corners, drove over other people, and muscled his way into being rich and powerful. Now that Facebook has gone public, it is clear that Zuckerberg has engineered a company that is far from resembling a team effort. He holds over 25 percent of Facebook shares outright, and has negotiated with other investors to raise his effective voting power to 60 percent of shares. Even if his image owes a great deal to media photoshopping, Zuckerberg has done little to combat the idea that he values his own opinion and comfort much more than anyone else’s, a philosophy embodied in everything from the way he dresses—you can wear flip-flops to a meet-and-greet when you’re Mark Zuckberg—to the way he communicates with his users—changes to Facebook are announced after the fact, because users are still in the Platonic cave of ignorance.

This titanic contrast is important because it’s evident that undergraduates are confused as to whether the Jeremy or Mark model best fits the Harvard student. This was evidenced by the recent dueling Internet memes of “Harvard Douche Bag” and “Harvard Good Guy.” One “lights cigars/with Princeton acceptance letter,” and the other, “is rich/works dorm crew.” One “gives a quarter to a homeless person/puts on resume,” and the other, “finishes thesis draft early/doesn’t post on Facebook.” What is at stake in the contrast between these two figures is not their level of talent. Rather, the central difference between these two figures is their degree of humility.

Another indication of this confusion came in an email that was recently circulated around campus entitled, “A Rant About Women,” in which the writer, an N.Y.U. fellow, complained that, “not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.” The many women who passed on this email seemed genuinely concerned that being a humble person was neither a widespread nor worthy way of behaving on this campus.

Then again, perhaps we’re not confused about ourselves at all. Perhaps we’re confused about how we compare to the rest of the student body. The Class of 2014, when surveyed at the end of their freshman year, ranked “hard work, honesty, respect, and compassion” as their top four personal values. Yet, they ranked “success” as the value Harvard stands for the most. Therefore, individually, we see ourselves as more like Jeremy, though in the context of Harvard, we think we need to be more like Mark.

It seems pretty evident that being a Mark would bring us quicker and sharper success. Business analysts seem sure, at least now, that Facebook’s phenomenal development is due in large part to Zuckerberg’s inability to listen to opposition and confidence that his decisions will always be the right ones. Facebook filed for a $5 billion-dollar public offering three weeks ago because he single-handedly held off powerful buys, including a potentially billion-dollar one from Viacom. In contrast, Lin’s success may have been delayed because the strengths of his game seem more altruistic and less selfish—more team basketball than All-star basketball. At least one NBA player, albeit one who changed his name to Metta World Peace, has advised him to get more swagger. “You’re in New York, the fashion capital. Change your haircut, OK? You’re a star now. Wear some shades. Shades, OK? Put down the nerdy Harvard book glasses.”

Of course, my purpose is not to demonize Mark Zuckberg. Regardless of his persona, Facebook has improved mechanisms of global social relations and has become a key method of facilitating democratic uprisings. Still, the merit of a person’s accomplishment should be separated from a person’s public character, and we can disapprove of one while still acknowledging the other. In this light, it’s important to note that the kind of public respect Jeremy Lin has, whether his magical performances continue are not, is borne of genuine admiration rather than resentful acknowledgement. People pay tribute to Mark Zuckerberg, but people want to follow Jeremy Lin. One is clearly a better model for leadership out of Harvard. After all, how many puns have you heard on “Zuckerberg” lately?

An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah

Farah Pahlavi

447 pp. Miramax Books. $24.95

For over thirty years, Farah Pahlavi has been forbidden from setting foot in the country she once ruled. Married in 1959 to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, she reigned alongside him until the 1979 Islamic Revolution made pariahs of Iran’s powerful royal family, forcing them into the nightmare of exile. In her 2004 memoir An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah, Pahlavi chronicles this nightmare and the years leading up to it with a bias only a proud leader could possess. Her pride in the Iranian people, in the monarchy, and, most all, in her late husband nearly distorts history to describe an idealistic Iran that arguably never existed.

Her memoir’s defense of the monarchy is steadfast to a surprising degree; over the years, the monarchy’s critics have accused the shah of varying degrees of fiscal irresponsibility, censorship, oppression, and subservience to the West, but Pahlavi rarely acknowledges any of these accusations – and when she does, a short justification undoubtedly follows.

The monarchy has historically been lambasted for living in extravagance while other Iranians suffered in abject poverty, but Pahlavi repeatedly insists that the monarchy was careful to avoid excessive costs in all endeavors – including the infamous 1971 festival at Persepolis. Its grand purpose, she insists, was to celebrate the Persian Empire’s 2,500th anniversary and foster a sense of national unity and identity. But even here, Pahlavi hardly admits fault: She justifies the festival by insisting that the high price tag was unintentional on the monarchy’s part because only European businesses could provide services in time for the festival. Foreign journalists and Islamic clerics, she continues, exaggerated the expense and distorted the festival’s meaning.

Even SAVAK, the monarchy’s notorious intelligence agency, nearly escapes Pahlavi’s criticism. Frequently referred to as the shah’s secret police, it is now blamed for the ruthless suppression of any opposition to the monarchy. Pahlavi blames any “indefensible acts” on a few overzealous agents rather than the monarchy itself. For her, the reason behind SAVAK’s redemption is simple: If the king only had enough time, SAVAK would have evolved into Iran’s CIA.

That refrain of a just reign cut lamentably short is repeated throughout the memoir. She credits the Pahlavi dynasty’s tireless efforts and her husband’s six-point White Revolution for leading Iran’s transition from “medieval” to modern, from an underdeveloped country to developing. If the shah had more time, she insists, the monarchy would have nurtured Iran to stand among the Western powers.

To her credit, Pahlavi herself did more than her expected share of nurturing the nation. Striving to be more than just a hostess for royal dinner parties, she was the champion of numerous social causes, including the improvement of the status of women, lepers, and orphans. It seems that her happiest memories come from her efforts to be a people’s queen, humbled by their adoration of her and eager to help as many of them as possible. Entire sections of the book are devoted to the plights of ordinary Iranians, describing how so many of them – especially women – reached out to her with their troubles and how she strove to fix them. Her methods of meeting these Iranians were, at times, endearing and amusing: knocking on the door of a random house in the city Rasht, visiting a small candy shop and having tea with the family who lived above it.

But Pahlavi’s happy years as queen do end with the tide of revolution. She credits a series of misunderstandings – the cost of the Persepolis celebration ranking high among them – and Khomeini’s sly scheming for the monarchy’s demise. Some of Pahlavi’s most potent writing rises from these turbulent years, chronicling her anxiety on the eve of revolution and her depression in its aftermath. She describes the humiliation of exile with a lingering sense of indignation, depicting the royal family? as unjustly ousted from the throne by the people they spent decades working tirelessly to help. Frequently separated from her four children and with her husband slowly dying from lymphoma, Pahlavi recounts her disbelief as the world turned its back on the exiled royal family – presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens, even apartheid South Africa – until Egypt seemed to be the last ally standing.

Reserved even when describing those disturbing months of exile, Pahlavi is finally and uncharacteristically candid about the suicide of her daughter, Leila, in 2001. “I, it is said, can help a whole community expelled from its homeland, yet I was not able to come to the aid of my own daughter,” she writes in the memoir’s final pages. Her pain is amplified by the knowledge of a tragedy yet to come: Her youngest son, Alireza, committed suicide in Boston in 2011, seven years after her memoir was published. It is a grim marker of the violent history that haunts the Pahlavis, revealing just how much death the former queen has experienced – that of her husband, her children, and, as she describes occasionally with great sadness, the many family friends executed immediately after the revolution.

Despite such morose themes, Pahlavi’s memoir details not only an enduring love for her husband, but also an enduring faith in the promise of an Iran free from its ruling clerics. Given the rosy depiction of the monarchy, it seems that the broader purpose of Pahlavi’s memoir is to rally support for her oldest son, Reza, who was crowned shah in a small ceremony in Egypt on his twentieth birthday in 1980; she notes that if the Iranian people ever look to her son for leadership, he will provide it. Just as the gears of revolution turned in 1979, Pahlavi does not dismiss the possibility of them turning again. In the memoir’s last paragraph, she all but guarantees it. “I have boundless faith in the ability of the Iranian people to throw off their chains and find the path of democracy, freedom, and progress,” she writes. “I know that light will triumph over darkness and Iran will rise from her ashes.”

Journalists and international officials have markedly ignored the modern history of Guatemala. The nation’s past includes a long list of wrongs against the indigenous peoples of the country, including exploitation by wealthy, mixed-race landowners and government complicity in discriminatory practices. However, until the 1983 publishing of Quiché leader Rigoberta Menchú’s controversial autobiography, the attention of the world was rarely drawn to the bloodshed and activism happening in Central America.

Menchú, born in 1959, spent most of her child- and young-adulthood embroiled in not only the Guatemalan Civil War, but also the injustices against native Indians by ladinos, citizens of European and Indian descent. Inspired by her father, whom she mentions “fought for twenty-two years” to wage “a heroic struggle against the landowners who wanted to take [their] land,” Menchú took on his cause. As an adult, she began to serve as an indigenous representative and activist, motivating the oppressed peoples of her nation to participate in the civil war. Meanwhile, empowered by the support of her village, she also fought against racism, poverty, and human rights abuses. She became a central leader of the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC) and a spokesperson for women’s rights. For her work organizing and leading the indigenous rights movement in Guatemala, Menchú received the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, though the victory was bittersweet—at that point in the civil war, her life had already been threatened multiple times, and she was living in exile.

It was while she was living in exile that Menchú felt propelled to create a record of her story. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, is her memoir chronicling why and how she dedicated herself to the cause of her people. Told to Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, an anthropologist who recorded Menchú’s stories and transcribed her words, the book reads as if Menchú is giving a testimony to some international court, explaining her own actions and those of an entire ethnic group: she says in the opening lines that her “story is the story of all poor Guatemalans” and her “personal experience is the reality of a whole people.” The theme of community is prevalent throughout I, Rigoberta Menchú, because it was community that initially motivated Menchú to action. She emphasizes multiple times that she is not the lone voice, activist, and humanitarian representing her people—that her parents, siblings, and many fellow Indians all fought for greater indigenous-ladino parity during and after the civil war. Consistently, Menchú stresses the importance of communal work and sharing, even—perhaps somewhat surprisingly—including ladinos in her mission to increase pay and rights for all disadvantaged Guatemalans.

While much of Menchú’s memoir is distinctively poignant and factual, especially when she describes in vivid detail the horrors of malnourishment, hard labor, and even torture, critics such as anthropologist David Stoll have cited inaccuracies in her telling of her own story. Indeed, controversy surrounds I, Rigoberta Menchú because documentation found since the publication of the memoir has indicated that she overdramatized events to create sympathy for the indigenous cause while omitting aspects of her Catholic school education, possibly to make her own stance seem more in line with Indian tradition. After all, Menchú presents herself as so dedicated to her culture that she grows up instinctively disliking ladinos and modern customs and technology because she knows “the outside world… is disgusting.” More than that, Menchú states she is completely willing to sacrifice her own life for the survival of Quiché traditions and beliefs. Stoll’s specific objections with I, Rigoberta Menchú revolve around the claim that she understates her formal education while overemphasizing or dramatizing the details of how members of her family died. True, the descriptions of how her brother and mother were tortured and killed by soldiers of the Guatemalan government are described in a manner that is meant to elicit sympathy for the indigenous movement and repugnance at the actions of their oppressors, so Stoll and other critics may be right in calling out Menchú for amplifying her story. However, the vast majority of her memoir is valid and verified, and it is not unthinkable that other Indian activists died in the manner her family members are said to have died. Said fellow writer Francisco Goldman in response to Stoll, “what rankles [about Stoll’s commentary] is the whiff of ideological obsession and zealotry, the odor of unfairness and meanness, the making of a mountain out of a molehill.”

The concerns about the memoir’s veracity beg the question of its value to the reader. The answer is merely that those who read Rigoberta Menchú’s book should treat it as yet another form of oral tradition. Just as she grew up listening to stories of her people’s culture, ancestors, traditions, and oppression, so should the reader. Like her ancestors, she “[applies] past experience to the present” in the telling of her life story; just as her “grandparents tell us many things that they’ve been witness to, things which must be passed on by their children,” Menchú is passing on the knowledge that she feels is most important for the world to know. In fact, her repeated mentions of storytelling and the passing down of wisdom, as well as her emphasis on collective knowledge, action, and credit, means that while her story is not absolutely, irrefutably factual, it is immensely valuable as a look into a culture and the mind of an activist. Menchú not only informs her readers about Indian culture—she immerses it in the richness of oral history and communal storytelling by speaking her story in a book form. So long as readers recognize it as a testimony, not a history, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is an example of Menchú’s near-complete dedication to the Indian cause and community, for she has been willing to do far more than serve as an activist and peasant organizer. Her memoir and the surrounding controversy indicate how deeply Menchú has immersed herself in her Indian identity and how much she desires to bring previously obscured indigenous history to the modern world.

Photo Credit: Verso Books