Law & Politics

When the Government Speaks

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

When the Government Speaks Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Eric Gershon

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law professor Helen Norton, author of the new book The Government’s Speech and the Constitution, examines the nature, complexities and limits of government expression — including whether the president may block you on Twitter.

Could you define ‘government speech’?

When I talk about the government’s speech, I’m referring to the speech of a governmental body like an agency or a legislature — think of the surgeon general’s report on tobacco or a congressional committee report — and the speech of an individual who speaks when backed by the government’s power, like the attorney general announcing official policy or a police officer interrogating a suspect.

What’s the difference between the government’s free speech right and an individual citizen’s?

The First Amendment gives each of us the right to be free from the government’s unjustified interference with our speech. But because governments have to speak in order to govern, the First Amendment doesn’t forbid the government from speaking on its own behalf — from expressing its own views.

This explains why tobacco companies don’t have a First Amendment right to force the surgeon general to deliver their opinions on the benefits of cigarettes, and why the President’s critics don’t have a First Amendment right to share the podium at the State of the Union address. What the First Amendment protects is dissenting speakers’ freedom to write their own reports and hold their own press conferences.

Are there any unambiguous legal restraints on government speech?

Think of government threats that silence dissenters as effectively jailing them, or government lies that pressure targets into relinquishing their constitutional rights as effectively denying those rights. When the government’s speech inflicts those sorts of injuries, it violates specific constitutional rights.

But difficult questions arise when we disagree — and often we do — about whether the government’s speech has actually caused those harms.

May the President of the United States legally block you on Twitter?

Is there a distinction between ‘the government’ and individual government leaders?

Often it’s clear when individual government officials speak for the government rather than in their capacity as private citizens — for example, when they issue press releases on government letterhead or otherwise specifically invoke their governmental power. On the other hand, government officials can and do speak as private citizens when they speak on matters unrelated to their governmental position — think, for instance, of a government official’s social media platform devoted to her thoughts about soccer or her summer reading list.

In your book, you note many examples of speech by U.S. presidents, including President Trump’s tweets. Does a U.S. president using his official Twitter account have the right to block a U.S. citizen from viewing his messages?

Not if he does so simply because he disagrees with them.

When a government official conducts official business on Twitter or other social media platforms, he is speaking as the government. This means his critics don’t have a First Amendment right to stop him from tweeting or to change his tweets to their liking — just as they have no First Amendment right to grab his microphone at a public speech.

But when a government official chooses to speak to the public about the government’s work through platforms like Twitter that permit the public’s commentary, the First Amendment forbids the government from excluding members of the public just because the government doesn’t like their views.

Are you following any interesting government speech cases?

Helen Norton

A federal appellate court in July issued an opinion in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, which involves the issues you raised in your last question. The bottom line is that the court correctly recognized that the First Amendment allows the government to speak to us, including through social media, but denies the government the power to silence or punish our dissent. This case gave the court the chance to remind government officials about the constitutional consequences of their expressive choices.

What got you thinking deeply about government speech?

I helped lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Clinton administration, so I have some experience with the issues that arise when speaking for the government. After I entered academia, my early work in this area focused on the value of the government’s speech so long as its governmental source is made clear. As the years passed, I also became interested in the dark side of the government’s speech — the government’s destructive expressive choices. This led me to wonder whether and when the Constitution limits the government’s speech.

I hear you’re a volunteer firefighter as well as a law professor.

Shortly after my husband and I moved to the mountains, nearly 10 years ago, we were evacuated for the Four Mile Fire. Our neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, helped keep our home safe while we were gone, and we wanted to pay it forward. I never expected to become a firefighter in my middle years, but I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve seen and done things I never expected to see or do.

What do you make of the U.S. Forest Service’s Smokey Bear campaign?

The Smokey Bear campaign is one of the longest-running and arguably most effective examples of government speech of all time. Through Smokey, the Forest Service tells us that “only you can prevent ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ” — and nobody wants to disappoint Smokey!

Condensed and edited.

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law professor Helen Norton examines the nature, complexities and limits of government expression — including whether the president may block you on Twitter.

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Environmental Justice For All

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Environmental Justice For All Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

Teresa DeAnda near her home in Earlimart, Calif., where a pesticide drift incident sickened more than 250 people.

Low-income and minority families still bear the brunt of toxic pollutants. Jill Harrison wants to know why.

Teresa DeAnda had just gathered her family for dinner in the backyard of her modest home in California’s Central Valley when her eyes and throat began to burn.

At first, she joked that her homemade salsa must be too spicy.

Then things took a serious turn.

All across the dusty farm community of Earlimart, residents began to fall ill that warm evening in November 1999. Some vomited or felt short of breath. Many called 911.

“People were scared,” said ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder sociologist Jill Harrison. “No one knew what was happening.”

By the time Harrison interviewed DeAnda two years later as part of her doctoral research, the mystery had been solved: Earlimart residents, including DeAnda, had been exposed to a toxic fog of metam sodium, an agricultural pesticide that had drifted into town after application on a nearby field. Ever since, the working-class, largely Latino community had been afflicted by a wave of miscarriages, cancer diagnoses, asthma and birth defects.

While it’s impossible to say how much that night’s exposure contributed to these health outcomes, DeAnda herself ultimately died, at age 55, of liver cancer.

“That experience really changed me,” said Harrison, looking at a photo of herself and DeAnda. “It made me realize that, not withstanding all the accomplishments made in terms of wilderness protection and improving air and water quality, there are still massive pockets of extraordinary environmental harm persisting in the United States. And race and class play a huge part in that.”

Since then, Harrison has traveled the country interviewing regulators, environmental justice workers, activists and industry stakeholders, asking this: Why, as the broader environmental movement has flourished, do people of color and the poor still face disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards?

Some people point fingers at industry. Others blame anti-regulatory conservatives.

Through her research, Harrison — who studies the cultural roots of environmental inequality — has pulled the curtain back on an uncomfortable truth: Well-meaning progressives working to solve environmental problems sometimes overlook, even exacerbate, the unique challenges facing vulnerable communities.

“A lot of people are trying to do the right thing for the environment,” she said. “But sometimes doing the right thing for you doesn’t necessarily help those most affected by the problem.”

Warren County to Flint

In 1994, President Bill Clinton took an important step toward environmental justice by signing an executive order instructing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement policies to “achieve environmental protection for all communities.”

By then, people of color had been fighting for this for decades.

In an iconic 1982 battle, Warren County, N.C., residents lay down in front of a line of dump trucks delivering 60,000 tons of contaminated soil to the edge of a local neighborhood. Years earlier, truckers had been caught unlawfully disposing of oil laden with highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), dumping it along the side of North Carolina highways. The state, with the EPA’s blessing, devised a plan to scrape it up and create a special landfill for it. Warren County residents saw it as no coincidence that their mostly black community, the poorest in the state, was selected for the site.

When the trucks arrived in September 1982, they met with hundreds of protesters. The delivery went ahead — but the protesters birthed a movement.

Jill Harrison

Yet, Harrison said, environmental racism persists.

In 2014, news broke that residents of Flint, Mich., — which is mostly black and largely poor — had lead-contaminated drinking water.

In 2016, protesters showed up in force in Western North Dakota to decry the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, which Native Americans viewed as a threat to their ancient burial grounds and water supplies.

More recently, studies have shown that Hispanics experience double the exposure to industrial chemicals like chlorine than whites do, and Latino school children are twice as likely as whites to go to schools near heavy pesticide use.

In 2018, the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment published a study showing that poor people and people of color are exposed to as much as 1.5 times more airborne pollutants, often from factories, than their white counterparts.

“There has been a lot of attention paid to recycling and saving the redwoods,” Harrison said. “But the lived experiences of Indigenous people, people of color, and those who live in poverty have not been a focus of the broader environmental movement. I want to honor the good work that’s been done by the environmental movement while pointing out the gaps.”

“The lived experiences of Indigenous people, people of color, and those who live in poverty have not been a focus of the broader environmental movement.”

Trouble at Home

Harrison grew up in a middle-class white family in Southern California in the 1980s. As an undergraduate in development studies at the University of California-Berkeley, she initially set her sights on addressing social inequalities in Central America. Then she heard about pesticide drift.

“My attention had been so focused on other countries that I hadn’t even considered the inequality and suffering going on in my own state,” she said.

During her first interviews with DeAnda, a non-confrontational mother-and-grandmother-turned-environmental activist, Harrison listened in disbelief about that day in 1999.

A nearby farm had used sprinklers to douse the ground with the legal but toxic fumigant, assuming it would soak in. But the day was warmer and windier than expected. A tainted fog began to lift and drift.

At least 250 residents fell ill. Dozens went to the hospital, racking up bills that would take years to pay.

Some, including children and elderly women, were rounded up by emergency responders, taken to a school playground, told to strip down to their undergarments and hosed down before TV cameras.

California fined the applicator $150,000. Metam sodium remains in use today.

“This never would have happened this way in Beverly Hills,” said Harrison.

Justice Redefined

While environmentalists concerned about pesticides often prioritize buying and eating organically grown food (which is grown without pesticides but involves only about 1% of farmland), this step alone has done little to help low-income agricultural communities like Earlimart avoid pesticide drift, Harrison’s research suggests.

She advocates for pesticide buffer zones around schools and neighborhoods, greater restrictions on which pesticides can be used and how, and providing farm neighbors with drift catchers, small devices for monitoring the air for pesticide residue.

“Jill seems to be the only person studying this at all. Period,” said Emily Marquez, a staff scientist with the Berkeley-based Pesticide Action Network, which works to counter pesticide drift. “These frontline communities already know they’re being poisoned, but the general public isn’t aware.”

As far as other pollutants go, Harrison believes that, first and foremost, existing regulations should be strengthened to reduce the amount of environmental hazards in use. Regulations could also be more evenly enforced, assuring that industries in underprivileged areas are monitored and penalized as severely as those in affluent communities. And new regulations could make it harder for new polluters to move into places already overburdened with them.

And, as Harrison discusses in her new book, From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice Within Government Agencies, the culture inside environmental regulatory agencies could be improved.

“Staff who have been tasked with trying to roll out environmental justice reforms face a lot of push-back from their own coworkers and, importantly, this pushback endures from one administration to the next,” said Harrison, who over the past eight years interviewed nearly 100 state and federal environmental regulatory agency employees.

Staff tasked with leading environmental justice reforms told her stories of eye-rolls and disinterest, and of complaints that considering environmental justice issues meant “just another box to check.”

“We need to reform regulatory practice so that reducing environmental inequalities is a top priority of government agencies,” Harrison said.

Government reform aside, she hopes her work will help people look beyond their own grocery cart or recycling bin, and reframe their notion of a “healthy environment.”

“Environmental justice requires fighting for things that might not benefit you directly,” she said, “and caring about people who live in places that might be very different from where you live.”

Photos @Getty Images/ Bettmann; @Getty Images/ Pacific Press (Flint); Tracy Perkins (top image)

Low-income and minority families still bear the brunt of toxic pollutants. Jill Harrison wants to know why.

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Her Kind of Case

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Her Kind of Case Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/01/2019 - 01:00

Amanda Clark

As a public defender and attorney, Jeanne Winer didn't care what crime her clients committed. It was her job to make their lives better one way or another.

As a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ public defender and private criminal defense attorney for 35 years, Jeanne Winer (Engl’72; Law’77) was not afraid to take the difficult cases.

“It didn’t matter what crime they committed, it was my job to make their lives better one way or another,” said Winer, of Boulder.

When she lost her first case as a public defender in Jefferson County, she sobbed in the bathroom. The client, who struggled with multiple personality disorder, was sentenced to years in prison for serial rape.

“It was my first really big case, and even though he had done horrible, horrible things, I still felt like I had failed him,” Winer said.

A lifelong political activist who grew up in Boston, her tireless advocacy for the voiceless led her to law school.

“I spent most of my free time protesting against the Vietnam War, and then for women’s civil and reproductive rights, then gay and lesbian liberation,” she said.

Winer received the Dan Bradley Award from the National LGBT Bar Association in 1996 for her trial work in Romer v. Evans, a landmark civil rights case that preceded and paved the way for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

“Romer was a huge win,” said Winer, who has been with her partner for 20 years. “I was deliriously happy. I was one of the few ‘out’ lesbians on the legal team. So I really felt the pressure."

Life as a defense lawyer took its toll. Martial arts became a lifeline. She now holds a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do.

“It was a way for me to get into my body and out of my head,” she said. “It became the greatest love of my life.”

Writing has also helped her decompress. Last year, she published her second novel, Her Kind of Case, a legal drama that centers on a female defense attorney on the cusp of 60 who represents a young man accused of helping kill a gay gang member.

“It’s one of the ways that I can escape into an alternative reality,” she said. “A reality that is happening in a different time.”

She says that women’s and gay rights have come a long way in the United States, but since the 2016 election, it’s been hard for her to stay positive. “Everything we worked so long on can disappear in an instant. It’s hard to come to terms with that reality.”

But she’s found productive ways to channel her energy: “There is a lot of creativity involved in being a trial lawyer, writer and martial artist,” she said. “All three take discipline and a lot of heart.”

As a public defender and attorney, Jeanne Winer didn't care what crime her clients committed. It was her job to make their lives better one way or another.

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The Congressman: Joe Neguse

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000

The Congressman: Joe Neguse Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 00:00

Eric Gershon

Former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder student body president Joe Neguse made a name for himself in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. Now he’s doing it in Washington, D.C.

There he is with Nancy Pelosi in the House Chamber. There he is making phone calls with Joe Biden. There he is addressing the press, Bernie Sanders behind one shoulder, Cory Booker behind the other.

That’s him on C-Span, CNN and CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder student body president Joe Neguse (Econ, PolSci’05; Law’09) made a name for himself in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. Now he’s doing it in Washington, D.C.

In November the one-time Baker Hall resident was handily elected to Congress from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s 2nd District, which includes Boulder, becoming the first ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ graduate to represent the university’s hometown in the House of Representatives since 1975 and the first African-American elected to Congress from any part of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.

Neguse, 34, hadn’t been sworn in yet when he emerged as a prominent member of Congress’ incoming class, the most demographically diverse in the nation’s history. Within weeks of the Nov. 6 election, he was elected to the House Democratic leadership as co-freshman representative. Soon afterward, he was asked to deliver the party’s final weekly address of 2018.

Since taking office Jan. 3, Neguse has won seats on the House Judiciary and Natural Resources committees, the latter of particular interest to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, given its influence over policy affecting public lands, outdoor recreation and wildlife. As of late January, he had introduced more bills than any freshman member of the 116th Congress.

No one who knows him is surprised.

“You never saw him wasting time,” said Steve Fenberg (EnvSt’06), majority leader of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ State Senate, recalling his days with Neguse at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, where they became close. “He was always doing something in service of his goals.”

American Tale

The son of Eritrean refugees and a self-described “eternal optimist,” Neguse has been on an upward trajectory in public life since his teens.

Born in California and raised in Highlands Ranch, Colo., he arrived at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ as a freshman in August 2002 with an impulse toward “civic activism,” he said in a January interview with the Coloradan.

"I reflect a great deal on their journey," Neguse said of his parents,
who fled Eritrea in the early 1980s.

He made connections in student government, worked on projects related to diversity, affordability and higher education finance, and eventually became a tri-executive, or co-president. He campaigned for statewide ballot measures and served as a Boulder Housing Authority commissioner, a city council-appointed post, while earning a reputation as a thorough student with a sense of humor and authentic humility.

Amid all that, Neguse managed to hold down a job at the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Rec Center, find time for intramural basketball, write an honors thesis about failing nation-states and graduate from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ a semester early with two majors and summa cum laude honors.

“I distinctly remember him coming in one week having consulted sources tracing back in African history to the 15th century,” said ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ political scientist David S. Brown, who led Neguse’s honors thesis committee (and whom Neguse credits with “a profound impact on my career”). “He uncovered pre-colonial trade routes to help explain why certain countries were able to maintain fairly stable exchange rates, a key government responsibility that is usually beyond the ability of most failed states.”

Brown added: “I feel honored that Joe regards me as a mentor, but I know better — I’ve always been the one learning from him.”

Between Neguse’s December 2005 graduation and his return to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ for law school (where he would be elected class president), he worked for Andrew Romanoff, then speaker of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ House of Representatives, and co-founded New Era ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, a nonprofit foundation that promotes civic engagement among young people through voter-registration drives and leadership training.

Joe Neguse in his former days as a member of the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Board of Regents (Photo by Casey A. Cass)

By 2008, according to the Denver Post, Romanoff was already joking that “one day we will all be working for Joe.”

That was the year Neguse, then 24 and still in law school, won election to the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Board of Regents, which governs all four ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ campuses. Among the youngest Regents ever, he served six years, representing the district he now serves in Congress.

In the years to come, Neguse would join one of Denver’s oldest law firms, Holland & Hart, run for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Secretary of State, fall short, and join then-Gov. John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as executive director of the state’s consumer protection agency.

In June 2017, just after Jared Polis, now governor, announced he would seek that office instead of a sixth term in Congress, Neguse said he would run for the seat. Now he’s a sitting member of the House of Representatives, serving alongside an unprecedented number of women, the first Muslim and Native American women and the youngest congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, 29.

Neguse’s background gives his arrival as a major ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ public figure a quintessentially American cast.

Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents who fled chaos in Eritrea in the 1980s, he grew up in Highlands Ranch and attended ThunderRidge High School. His parents, Debesai and Azeib Neguse, put themselves through school and raised Neguse and his sister, Sarah, with an appreciation for opportunity.

“I reflect a great deal on their journey,” said Neguse, whose parents, wife Andrea (Jour’11) and infant daughter Natalie attended his swearing-in. “It’s never too far from my mind.”

Washington

His early weeks in the capital were predictably busy.

Neguse set up shop in the Longworth House Office Building, began hiring staff, including district director and deputy chief of staff Sally Anderson (IntlAf’12), gave his first speech on the House floor and held town hall meetings in Estes Park, Fort Collins and Broomfield. He participated in efforts to end the 35-day government shutdown, introduced a flurry of bills — and spent a lot of time in the air. By his count, he took 10 flights in his first month in office.

During a mid-January return to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, he came to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ for a ceremonial second swearing-in at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law. His former professor Melissa Hart, now a state Supreme Court justice, administered the oath in Wittemyer Courtroom before an assembly that included Polis and former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law Dean Phil Weiser, now the state attorney general.

In brief remarks, Hart recalled that Neguse’s first law school class was the opening session of her civil procedure course. When she entered the room, she said, she noticed one student had the attention of most of the others.

"Exactly the kind of person you might want as your Congressman."

Describing Neguse as smart, funny, collaborative and “extremely kind,” she called him “exactly the kind of person you might want as your Congressman,” regardless of party affiliation.

Neguse’s early priorities in Washington have included public lands protection, voting rights, climate change, prescription drug costs, gun safety and immigration.

Higher education is on his agenda, too.

Well versed in the challenges facing colleges and universities from his years as a regent, Neguse said he was preparing legislation that would make it easier for students to transfer credits between two- and four-year schools, and is looking at ways to lower textbook costs.

He also plans to advocate, as he has since he was a student, for greater access to financial support for public higher education.

Constituents passing through Washington should feel at ease relaying their priorities in person: Beneath his office nameplate, Neguse has posted a sign that reads, “This office belongs to the people of 2nd Congressional district of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ.”

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "The Congressman." Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Top image by Getty Images/AAron Ontiveroz/Contributor

Former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder student body president Joe Neguse made a name for himself in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. Now he’s doing it in Washington, D.C.

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Serene Singh Is Oxford Bound

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Serene Singh Is Oxford Bound Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2019 - 00:00

Eric Gershon

Meet ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ's first Rhodes Scholar in a quarter century. She's got her sights set on a U.S. Supreme Court seat— and a Miss America title.

Serene Singh had been a Rhodes Scholar for less than 48 hours last November when she boarded a flight for Southern California. She had a contest to get to, National American Miss, the nation’s biggest youth beauty pageant.

Rhodes Scholars are rare enough — Singh, a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder senior, is one of 32 from the U.S. in the latest crop and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s first winner in 25 years. Rhodes Scholars also aiming to be Miss America were perhaps unheard of until now.

But Singh (Jour, PolSci’19), a bhangra-dancing, snowboarding Boettcher Scholar from ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Springs with a 3.98 GPA, isn’t shy about the diversity of her ambitions, or much else, for that matter.

“There’s no class in confidence,” she recently told a Denver audience of about 750 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ alumni and friends while dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit — you have it, or you build it.

The former Miss ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Teen and America’s Junior Miss said pageant competition has helped her cultivate presence, poise and a sense of her “own unique beauty.”

To pageant skeptics (she once was one), Singh says she skips bathing suit contests. But she doesn’t scoff at contestants who find confidence through them: “I say to those women, I think they should do it shamelessly. I applaud them for being bold.”

At 22, Singh has done a lot.

A champion debater, member of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Presidents Leadership Class and chief justice of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s student government, she’s also a classic activator: She founded ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Sikh Student Association, the National Sikh Youth Program and the Serenity Project, a nonprofit group devoted to empowering marginalized women.

There’s no class in confidence, said Singh — you have it, or you build it.

Last spring, mere months before she became ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s first woman Rhodes Scholar, she won a Truman Scholarship, which provides $30,000 awards for young people invested in public service and access to an alumni network rivaling the Rhodes’.

Last summer, after spending part of it as an Obama Foundation intern in Washington, she returned to campus and resumed the presidency of both ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s Sikh Student Association and the political science honors society — all while leading the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Bhangra Team, a competitive Punjabi dance squad. ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s team, part of the statewide team, numbers about 30, she said, mostly non-Indians.

Singh, who grew up in a Sikh family, was also preparing to undertake an honors thesis about public perception of Sikhs in the U.S., tackling two majors and stopping nearly every dog she saw for a pet and a selfie.

“I’ve got about 400 now,” she said, presumably including her own chihuahua, Betta (“child,” in Hindi).

After commencement in May, the Rhodes Scholarship will take her to England for all-expenses-paid graduate study at the University of Oxford. There she’ll follow in the footsteps of many prominent Americans, including Rhodes alumni Bill Clinton, Rachel Maddow and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White (Econ’38).

In all, 20 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumni have won the Rhodes since it was established in 1902. Before Singh, the last ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Buff Rhodes Scholar was Jim Hansen (Engr’92; MAeroEngr’93), in 1993. The former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ football captain later earned an Oxford Ph.D. Today he is superintendent of the Naval Research Laboratory’s Marine Meteorology Division.

Worldwide, there were 100 new Rhodes Scholars in 2018. Of the U.S. contingent, 21 were women, the most ever. Besides Singh, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s Nikki van den Heever (CivEngr’17; MEngr’19) made the final round.

At Oxford, Singh plans to study public policy, criminology and criminal justice, preparation for law school in the United States. Her long-term ambition, she said, is a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“People often hold themselves back through their own fear or self-doubt,” said Ross Taylor of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s College of Media, Communications and Information, who has taught Singh in several courses. “Serene may have doubt, but she overcomes it and is fearless.”

“There’s no dull at all in bhangra,” Singh said, noting it means ‘intoxicated with joy.’ “I think life should be lived like that, too.”

Before Singh leaves for the U.K., she’s got half a semester to enjoy at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ still, plus a running list of off-campus projects and adventures in mind.

She’ll wrap up the thesis, finalize plans for life overseas and convene with her Truman Scholar class in Washington. She wants to skydive, visit Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs, see the world’s biggest collection of keys, stage a fashion show for the Serenity Project and leave the National Sikh Youth Program in trusted hands.

If it seems like Singh rarely rests, you’re onto something.

“I could do a much better job,” she said.

So, she dances whenever she gets a chance, even if it’s just a few steps on the way to class — ballet, hip-hop, bhangra.

It energizes her.

“There’s no dull at all in bhangra,” she said, noting it means ‘intoxicated with joy.’ “I think life should be lived like that, too.”

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "Oxford Bound."
Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Photos by Glenn Asakawa (Journ'86). To view more outtakes of our cover, click here.

Meet ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ's first Rhodes Scholar in a quarter century. She's got her sights set on a U.S. Supreme Court seat— and a Miss America title.

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Toughest Footrace on Earth

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 22:38:00 +0000

Toughest Footrace on Earth Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 15:38

Amanda Clark

Last April, when Corey Cappelloni (Law’04) stepped up to the starting line of the Marathon des Sables — a six-day, 156-mile ultra marathon through the heart of the Sahara Desert — his mind was calm.

“Life became very simple at that point. No email, no texting, no deadlines... All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other,” said the asylum officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

He’d run ultra marathons before — but never in the world’s largest hot desert, a race the Discovery Channel has dubbed “the toughest footrace on Earth.”

Since 1986, three people have died trying to complete the race in southern Morocco. Routinely, hundreds fail to finish.

Organizers provide water refills every 10 miles and open tents to sleep in, but little else. Runners carry all their own survival supplies, including anti-venom kits.

“Initially, I was totally intimidated by the idea of the race,” said Cappelloni, one of nearly 1,000 participants from 60 countries in the latest event.

He’d signed up in 2015, then dropped out after contracting typhoid fever and a stomach parasite during a work trip in Tanzania. In 2016, he still didn’t feel ready.

Finishing the 2017 Half Marathon des Sables, a 70-mile race on an island off the Moroccan coast, gave him confidence. The first American to finish, he placed 31st overall.

“Then I was kinda like, ‘I can do this,’ said Cappelloni, who trained in winter garb with a backpack full of ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law books.

But four months before the Sahara race, Cappelloni hurt his hip, losing six weeks of training time.

“I went from running nearly 90 miles a week to not being able to walk the four blocks to the metro,” he said.

Cappelloni considered dropping out again, but Jay Batchen, the race’s North American representative, convinced him not to.

“It was too late to get a refund, so I just told him to go for it,” said Batchen, who has finished the race 13 times.

“It’s a life changing experience...you really can’t explain it, you just have to experience it. People do the race because it’s very different than everyday life. It takes you out of your comfort zone. Of course, you have to be a little crazy, too,” he said.

Turns out, Cappelloni’s hip injury wasn’t the thing to worry about.

Thirty-five miles into the race’s fourth day, his right leg began to hurt. When he arrived at camp, quarter-sized blisters engulfed his feet.

He was in agony and too tired to open his backpack for food.

Then a race organizer handed him a letter.

The fine white paper seemed strange in his hands, a foreign object in the middle of one of the world’s largest deserts. It was from his 9-year-old daughter, Emma. “Happy Birthday, Papa!” it read.

The next day, Cappelloni could barely walk. The medics said it was most likely a stress fracture.

For 26 grueling miles, he limped through the sprawling desert, pain pulsing with every step.

He thought about the unthinkable distances refugees travel when forced to flee their homes, often over inhospitable terrain with all they can carry on their backs.

“I knew I could keep going,” he said.

When he crossed the finish line, he called Emma and thanked her for believing in him.

“You forget the pain and the sweat and the blood and everything, and you just remember the life-changing experience,” said Cappelloni. "We’ll see what I do next. I’m just enjoying my daily jogs and spending time with my daughter.”

Photo courtesy Corey Cappelloni

When Corey Cappelloni stepped up to the starting line of the Marathon des Sables — a156-mile ultra marathon through the Sahara Desert — his mind was calm.

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Recreating George Washington's Porter

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 21:45:00 +0000

Recreating George Washington's Porter Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 14:45

Daniel Strain

America’s first president brewed his own beer. Travis Rupp wants you to be able to taste it.

For anyone who’s ever wanted to share a cold one with George Washington, Travis Rupp (MClass’10) has you covered. Or will soon, anyway.

Rupp, who sports a short beard and a laid-back vibe, represents a uniquely Boulder double threat: The ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder classics lecturer is also the official “beer archaeologist” for a local brewer, Avery Brewing Company.

In this second role, Rupp draws on his training as a historian steeped in classical Greek and Roman culture to bring ancient beers back to life. He’s researched and recreated the favorite drink of an Akkadian king who ruled around 1750 B.C. The result is Avery’s Beersheba, a light beer flavored with pomegranate.

He also brewed Ragnarsdrapa, a darker ale associated with the Vikings.

Now Rupp has set his sights on reproducing a concoction that, for him, is practically modern history: The porter that America’s first president brewed at Mount Vernon, his Virginia estate.

The project has sent Rupp east to pore through the founding father’s journals and to explore the central role beer played in Colonial America.

Rupp, who expects the project to take months, readily admits he has no idea how it will turn out.

“People still to this day ask me, ‘Do you know what your new beer is going to taste like?’” he said. “Of course, I don’t. These ancient beers had weird stuff in them.”

Still, he said, even an approximation offers a vivid sense of our shared past.

Silver Pint Cup

In the early United States, beer was the drink of rich and poor alike. In Washington’s heyday, ale was everywhere — made mostly in the home, but also in big-city breweries in New York and Philadelphia.

Beer was such an important part of American life, Rupp said, that it may have contributed to James Madison’s 1777 loss in his first campaign to be a Virginia House delegate. The future father of the Constitution refused to give free alcohol to would-be voters. His opponent — coincidentally named Charles Porter — had no such scruples: “Porter handed out porter,” Rupp said.

Washington himself likely brewed two beers on his estate, Rupp said: A porter, which may have been dark and a bit sour, and a lighter ale called a “small beer.”

"These ancient beers had weird stuff in them."

One guest at Washington’s presidential dinners reported that he kept a “silver pint cup or mug of beer” next to his plate at dinner.

To refill that cup, Rupp has become a detective.

Judging from Washington’s diligent notes, he said, the founding father’s porter was likely made from dark malts, whole-cone hops and molasses.

“But he doesn’t give quantities for his recipes,” Rupp said. “Often, he’ll write something like ‘fill the sieve basket with hops.’ Well, how much hops does the sieve basket hold? How big is it?”

So, Rupp is examining a wide range of documents from the Mount Vernon library and elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic. Purchasing records, for example, could indicate ingredient ratios. He’ll also take a close look at the equipment used by colonial brewers.

Rupp knows his porter (or small beer, if he starts with that) will never perfectly match Washington’s. But he hopes he’ll get close enough for modern Americans to gain a better appreciation of Washington as a person.

“What Travis is doing is a sort of experiment of what the ancient world could have been like,” said ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder classics professor Dimitri Nakassis, referring to Rupp’s broader project. “We have to do that kind of stuff if we want to understand these people and the richness of their lives.”

Whether you’re George Washington or a 21st-century Boulderite, Rupp said, one time-honored way to connect with other people is to share a pint.

“It turns us into social beings,” he said. “It makes us human.”

Comment? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Illustration by Roxy Torres

America’s first president brewed his own beer. Travis Rupp wants you to be able to taste it.

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Our Woman in Havana

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 21:31:00 +0000

Our Woman in Havana Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 14:31

Aimee Anderson

When they first met, at a 1991 Palacio de la Revolucion celebration, Fidel Castro asked Vicki Huddleston if she was someone’s spouse.

She told him she was the director of Cuban affairs for the United States.

“Oh? I thought I was!” Castro said.

Huddleston (IntlAf’64) — the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 1999 to 2002 — held the position at a time when few women held a comparable rank. And despite Castro’s initial condescension, she found that being a woman was to her advantage.

“I felt I was more personally involved with the Cuban people and Fidel Castro, because Castro liked women,” she said over the summer from her home in Santa Fe, N.M.

In a distinguished diplomatic career that began in 1976, following service in the Peace Corps in Peru, Huddleston served not only in Cuba — the main subject of her recent memoir, Our Woman in Havana — but also as U.S. ambassador to Madagascar and Mali.

The book explores the tense history of U.S.-Cuba relations while recounting rich anecdotes from her own experience — of the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the 5-year-old Cuban boy who was the subject of a fierce international custody battle, of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and of Fidel Castro himself.

It also clarifies why Huddleston felt being a woman was helpful.

As head of the U.S. Interests Section, she implemented programs intended to empower the Cuban people to engage with the wider world. She and her staff provided access to uncensored devices and information by handing out books and portable radios. They also hosted dissidents in their homes to help activists make connections.

“A male ambassador would not have done what I did,” Huddleston said. “I think in a way it would have been beneath him to be handing out radios.”

Castro’s notorious fondness for women helped.

“Fidel was more open to working with a woman,” Huddleston said. “So there was always a possibility of finding a way open [between the U.S. and Cuba]. I don’t think there are any kind of personal relationships now.”

Huddleston’s memoir offers a window into the start-and-stop, forward-backward nature of U.S.-Cuba relations over the past two decades.

When she arrived in 1999, the U.S.’s trade embargo was still firm. But the Clinton administration eased travel restrictions and enabled relations with the Cuban government. The Bush administration initially continued this, before reverting to stricter policy.

In 2002 Huddleston left to become U.S. ambassador to Mali. Soon afterward, Castro jailed 75 dissidents and Huddleston’s radio and book distribution program stalled.

“I didn’t agree with anything the [U.S.] administration was doing,” she said.

Huddleston still follows foreign affairs closely and expresses frustration with U.S.-Cuba policy, increasingly fraught after seeming improvement during the Obama years. She hopes her book will convince readers that hardline U.S. policy has failed.

“And not only that it failed,” she said, “but that when we are more open, Cuba is more open.”

Photo courtesy the Overlook Press

Vicki Huddleston was the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 1999 to 2002. She held the position at a time when few women held a comparable rank.

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Peace Activist

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Sep 2018 06:00:00 +0000

Peace Activist Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 09/01/2018 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

In May 2015, Christine Ahn traveled to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea for a peace walk to call for a final end to the Korean War.

When the day came, Christine Ahn (PolSci’98) grappled with mixed emotions.

In May 2015, she traveled to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea for a peace walk organized by Women Cross DMZ, a group she founded to foster peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Ahn, an American citizen who was born in South Korea and lives in Hawaii, and 30 other women activists planned to cross the two-mile-wide zone on foot to call for a final end to the Korean War. Fighting stopped in 1953, but the countries never signed a formal peace agreement.

Upon arrival, she learned of a possible acid attack by protestors.

“I recall this sinking feeling of being so excited to see my three-year-old daughter and husband, who had traveled from Honolulu to meet me at the other side of the DMZ, but being terrified that they might be the victim of such an attack,” she said.

Ahn decided to walk anyway — at the front of the line.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland marched with her.

No one threw acid. The peace walkers punctuated their symbolic stroll by rallying with thousands of other supporters, then convened in Seoul for a women’s peace symposium.

With no formal Korean peace agreement signed yet, Ahn forges on, with Maguire and many others at her side.

“[Her] work of bringing Korean women [from both] North and South and international women together for dialogue has shown the importance of women and civil community in peacemaking,” Maguire told the Coloradan.

Encouragement helps. After the walk, Ahn faced public accusations of being under North Korean government influence. South Korea placed her on a blacklist — via orders of then president Park Geun-hye, who is now imprisoned for political corruption — prohibiting her from traveling to her native country.

“The Cold War is still raging on in South Korea,” said Ahn, who frequently comments on Korean affairs for the news media.

It was a busy summer in 2018 for her on that front, given President Trump’s controversial summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

She favorably viewed the June summit, arguing that peace between the U.S. and North Korea is vital for inter-Korean peace.

“For true peace and understanding to take place, it will take people-to- people engagement, from civil society to business,” she said. “That is my hope and what I have been long working for.”

Photos by David Guttenfelder; Headshot courtesy of Christine Ahn

In May 2015, Christine Ahn traveled to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea for a peace walk to call for a final end to the Korean War.

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Dreamers Among Us

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 15:10:00 +0000

Dreamers Among Us Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/01/2018 - 09:10

Eric Gershon

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ 100 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students are undocumented immigrants with federal DACA status. They’re doing amazing things. But planning for the future isn’t easy.

Alan Sanchez thinks far ahead in time and far away in space.

With one course to go for a joint bachelor’s-master’s degree in aerospace engineering, the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder student has set his sights on a career in spacecraft propulsion. Long-term, he’s ready to ride all the way to Mars to help develop a viable human habitat there.

Here on Earth, he’s been doing all the right things to cultivate the hard and soft skills that will come in handy as a member of high-stakes technical teams.

Besides immersing himself in physics, fluid dynamics and philosophy, he’s worked a series of paid jobs while attending school full-time, including roles with the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-based National Snow and Ice Data Center and the engineering college's Precision Laser Diagnostics Lab. He’s been a resident adviser in Libby Hall, a private tutor and a childcare provider at a Boulder school where immigrant parents learn to speak and read English.

Sanchez (AeroEngr’17; MS’18) has an internship with Tesla now. On the side, he’s a competitive breakdancer.

But more than time and space stand between him and his ambitions.

I have lived most of my life in a state of limbo.”

“I’m not a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident,” he said.

Sanchez, 23, is one of an estimated 1-4 million people in the United States born in a foreign country, brought to the U.S. as children and raised here without legal immigration status, often referred to as “Dreamers.” He came to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ from Mexico at 8 months old and grew up in Denver, the youngest of three children of undocumented immigrant parents. His father operates an HVAC repair business, his mother runs a liquor store.

At ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, Sanchez is one of about 100 undocumented students with temporary relief from deportation under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, established in 2012. It also offers a Social Security number and permission to work.

Without work, most DACA students couldn’t afford to attend ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ, given family circumstances and their ineligibility for federal financial aid. Even with multiple jobs and in-state tuition, many can barely afford it.

“I always had at least one job,” Sanchez said. “There were periods when I had three.”

DACA helps, but hardly resolves the predicament of students like Sanchez and Shiyan Zhang (Acct, Fin’18), who met through the Inspired Dreamers, a campus advocacy group founded by DACA students. DACA doesn’t make them citizens or provide a pathway to legal status, and it’s valid for two-year stretches only, leaving them perpetually in limbo.

“You cannot plan for the future,” said Zhang, a Grand Junction (Colo.) High School graduate whose parents brought her to the U.S. from China via Botswana when she was 5 years old. “So you learn to live in the moment.”

That doesn’t make the moment comfortable: In September, the Justice Department said it would end DACA.

Federal courts have temporarily blocked the plan, allowing individuals with existing DACA protections to renew. The government stopped taking first-time applications, but a separate court ruling in April could force it to resume.

Were DACA to go away, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ students like Sanchez and Zhang could be subject to arrest and deportation to countries that are as foreign to them as ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ is familiar.

Besides the personal cost to students and their families, the U.S. would lose the benefit of the skills they acquired here, said Violeta Raquel Chapin, a clinical professor at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law School who co-advises the Inspired Dreamers with David Aragon, assistant vice chancellor for diversity, learning and student success.

“And I think we lose any kind of moral authority to say that we try to do things that are right and decent,” Chapin said.

You cannot plan for the future. So you learn to live in the moment.”

For Sanchez, his immigration status has complicated the pursuit of internships in his chosen field, even with firms eager to have him: In many cases, federal rules forbid aerospace and defense contractors from employing foreign nationals.

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, like many universities, has publicly declared its support for DACA and taken steps to help DACA students navigate the extreme uncertainty of life amid shifting federal immigration policies.

Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano joined more than 700 university leaders who signed an open letter drafted by Pomona College declaring that “DACA should be upheld, continued and expanded,” calling the policy “a moral imperative and a national necessity.” ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ has started a relief fund to help students meet emergency expenses, including $495 DACA renewal application fees, and expanded financial aid for tuition. Chapin said she and her ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ law students have helped at least 50 students fill out and file renewal applications.

She also lends her ear to students wrestling with fear and frustration as they try to set a course for their lives amid national discord over immigration policy. She’s invited all of them to her home for a barbecue in June.

“It’s a little bit of a social worker aspect, which I’ve always embraced as a defense lawyer,” said Chapin, a former Washington, D.C., public defender. “You meet with people in the most challenging moments in their lives. You listen to them, hear feelings, anxieties and emotions. I try to do that as often as I can.”

Sanchez isn’t the sort to dwell on negative thoughts. He’s an engineer, and engineers are pragmatic. He’s got problems to solve and an opportunity at Tesla to seize, an opportunity that could spawn others.

There’s meanwhile the business of living and making plans amid profound uncertainty. Sanchez wants financial security, so he’s been looking into Roth IRAs. He’s working to set up a scholarship for first-year ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students who can’t afford to live on campus, as he once couldn’t. He tries to make time to dance.

Sanchez worries less about himself and his siblings, he said, than about his undocumented parents, who are ineligible for DACA.

“There’s nothing to protect them,” he said.

It weighs on him.

The needs of Shiyan Zhang’s younger siblings in Grand Junction add urgency to her own search for stability. Their parents have divorced. From Boulder, Zhang helps look after the kids, taking responsibility even for registering them for school, she said.

Zhang must look out for herself, too, of course. She wants to move up in the world, and has been offered a summer internship with a Denver firm she’d like to join full-time. But she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to take it, given her immigration status.

“You feel so helpless,” she said.

One thing Sanchez and Zhang can do is share their stories, two among millions.

Twice in recent months Sanchez has addressed ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumni audiences, once in Los Angeles, once in Washington, D.C.

“I have lived most of my life in a state of limbo, not knowing exactly where I stand and who around me would like to see me fall,” he said at the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder Next conference in Los Angeles. “It means the world to me that ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder is openly supportive of DACA students, and I can’t thank them enough for that.”

Afterward, an alumnus approached him and offered a ring as a token of solidarity.

“When you graduate, give this ring to the next DACA student you think should have [it],” Sanchez said the man told him.

Soon Alan Sanchez will have two degrees from a leading American aerospace engineering program. He’d like to put them to work for America.

Photos by Glenn Asakawa

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ 100 ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students are undocumented immigrants with federal DACA status. They’re doing amazing things. But planning for the future isn’t easy.

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