Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Friday, October 25, 2019

Alanna Berger
Zack Blumberg
Emily Considine
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Emily Huhman
Krystal Hur
Ethan Kessler
Magdalena Mihaylova
Timothy Spurlin

Miles Stephenson
Finn Storer
Nicholas Tomaino
Joel Weiner
Erin White 

FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor

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Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 
AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

MARISA WRIGHT | COLUMN

The consequences of a conservative Supreme Court
E

arlier this month, the 
Supreme Court began 
its new term. On the 
docket for 2019 through 2020 
are several paramount cases, 
ranging 
from 
potentially 
limiting 
women’s 
access 
to 
abortion 
to 
weakening 
the Affordable Care Act to 
stripping LGBTQ folks of their 
civil rights. 
This 
term 
will 
be 
the 
second full term with the 
current 
group 
of 
justices 
following 
the 
confirmation 
of Brett Kavanaugh, who was 
credibly accused of sexually 
assaulting 
multiple 
women 
and lied under oath. With the 
retirement of Justice Anthony 
Kennedy in 2018, who was 
often considered a swing vote, 
Kavanaugh’s 
confirmation 
means the Supreme Court is 
now solidly conservative. 
Though 
Republicans 
scoffed at women’s fear that 
Kavanaugh’s 
confirmation 
meant the end of Roe v. Wade 
and Planned Parenthood v. 
Casey, even calling women 
“hysterical,” 
Kavanaugh’s 
confirmation 
marked 
the 
court’s sharp ideological shift 
to the right and the beginning 
of the end for legal abortion in 
the United States. 
In 
2016, 
the 
Supreme 
Court struck down a Texas 
law 
that 
limited 
abortion 
access; however, it has now 
decided to hear a case about 
a similar Louisiana law that 
requires abortion providers 
to have admitting privileges 
at 
local 
hospitals. 
Eager 
to 
avoid 
controversy 
and 
legal liability, though, local 
hospitals are unwilling to give 
abortion providers admitting 
privileges. Masked as concern 
for 
women’s 
health, 
given 
abortion is an “extremely safe” 
medical procedure, the law 
is ultimately geared toward 
ending abortion access without 
overturning Roe outright. 
In another set of cases, the 
court will decide if workplace 
discrimination and firing is 
legally based on an employee’s 
gender 
identity 
or 
sexual 
orientation. The first pair of 
cases concern two men who 
were fired for being gay. The 
other case was brought by a 
transgender woman, Aimee 
Stephens, 
who 
was 
fired 
after telling her boss that she 
was deciding to embrace her 
gender 
identity 
and 
begin 
transitioning. 
The Supreme Court will 
decide if the Civil Rights Act 

of 1964, specifically Title VII, 
which 
prohibits 
workplace 
discrimination on the basis of 
sex, race, color, national origin 
and religion, applies to LGBTQ 
people. In other words, it 
will decide whether or not 
queer 
people 
have 
rights. 
As if this wasn’t atrocious 
enough, the rulings could have 
broader impact on all workers 
because the case challenges 
protections for anyone who 
does not conform to gender 
stereotypes. 
“A 
rule 
in 
(the 
Trump 
administration’s) 
favor 
could 
drastically 
change 
workplace 
protections 
for 
all women, whether or not 
they are LGBTQ, and anyone 
who does not conform to the 
administration’s 
preferred 
gender 
norms. 
That 
could 
include men with long hair, 
women with short hair, men 
who are primary caretakers 
of children or parents, women 
who wear pants, women who 
work outside the home or are 
the primary breadwinners,” 
said journalist Ann Friedman 
in 
a 
recent 
conversation 
with Chase Strangio, a staff 
attorney for the American 
Civil 
Liberties 
Union 
and 
trans rights activist.
The other important cases 
the Supreme Court will hear 
involve 
immigration, 
the 
Affordable Care Act and the 
Second Amendment. One case 
on immigration will decide 
if the Trump administration 
can 
end 
protections 
for 
“Dreamers” in DACA, and 
another will decide border 
control 
policies. 
A 
case 
involving 
the 
ACA 
would 
allow insurance companies to 
receive $12 billion from the 
federal government as a result 
of Republicans voting to gut 
the healthcare law. Finally, 
another case will decide the 
legality of New York’s gun law 
limiting the distribution and 
transportation of firearms. 
With 2020 looming, it is 
hard to believe the Supreme 
Court would hear cases on 
such divisive issues in an 
election year. And yet, here we 
are. 
With 
one 
single 
vote, 
the 
Supreme 
Court 
could 
eliminate 
decades 
worth 
of progress for women and 
queer folks. Border patrol 
and gun advocates could be 
strengthened. The ACA could 
be undermined. So how did we 
get here? 
In 
case 
you 
forgot 
or 

haven’t been paying attention 
for the last three horrifying 
years, we’re here because of 
President Donald Trump and 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch 
McConnell. In a politically-
brazen 
move, 
McConnell 
stole 
Merrick 
Garland’s 
seat on the Supreme Court 
in order to hold it open for 
a conservative justice. It is 
important to remember how 
Trump’s campaign released a 
list of potential conservative 
Supreme 
Court 
nominees 
during the 2016 campaign, 
which was at least a partially 
motivating factor for Trump’s 
voters. Then the Republicans, 
including disappointing votes 
from U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, 
R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, 
R-Alaska, confirmed a second 
man who was accussed of 
committing sexual abuse to 
the highest court in the land.
Some of the candidates in 
the Democratic primary have 
put forth ideas about how to 
make the Supreme Court more 
democratic — as in democracy, 
not the Democratic Party. 
Many candidates are open 
to court packing, enacting 
term limits for justices or 
impeaching Brett Kavanaugh 
for 
new 
sexual 
assault 
allegations. 
Notably, 
the 
Democratic 
frontrunner, 
former Vice President Joe 
Biden, does not support an 
impeachment of Kavanaugh. 
While I understand the 
pushback on court packing 
because 
it 
enables 
the 
Republicans to do it freely 
in 
the 
future, 
we 
should 
remember that the Republicans 
already changed the number of 
justices on the Supreme Court. 
When McConnell refused to 
hold hearings for President 
Obama’s 
nominee—Chief 
Judge for the DC Circuit Court 
of Appeals Merrick Garland—
he limited the Supreme Court 
to eight seats for more than a 
year. 
Though Chase Strangio of 
the ACLU has urged people on 
show up and protest outside 
the Supreme Court chambers, 
there is little Democrats and 
progressives can do to stop the 
Supreme Court from stripping 
rights 
from 
millions 
of 
Americans at this point. Going 
forward, though, it is essential 
for Democrats to make the 
Supreme Court a priority at 
the ballot box. 

TIMOTHY SPURLIN | COLUMN
Fossil fuel divestment is complex but necessary

VARNA KODOTH | COLUMN

Why you should care about representation
N

owadays, I’ve noticed 
that 
there’s 
been 
a growing wave of 
female celebrities who are 
using their platform to incite 
change by speaking against 
social 
injustices, 
like 
the 
gender pay gap. In her Emmy 
acceptance 
speech, 
actress 
Michelle Williams urged the 
audience, “The next time a 
woman – and especially a 
woman of color, because she 
stands to make 52 cents on 
the dollar compared to her 
white male counterpart – tells 
you what she needs in order 
to do her job, listen to her. 
Believe her.” It’s so important 
to 
heed 
the 
underlying 
message here: This is a call 
to the greater community to 
make a conscious effort to 
create a healthy and inclusive 
work environment in which 
male, female and non-binary 
individuals are valued for 
their work.
Growing 
up, 
when 
I 
watched award shows like 
the Oscars, Emmys, Grammys 
and MTV awards, I’d watch 
solely to confirm whether 
or not my favorite artists or 
actors secured wins in the 
most mainstream categories, 
and then promptly fall asleep 
thereafter. 
The 
next 
day 
I’d wake up and continue 
listening to and watching the 
same artists and actresses. It 
wasn’t a huge of a deal to me.
Fast-forward to the present 
day, and I find myself looking 
specifically 
for 
women 
of 
color, and in general, Black, 
Latinx, Asian and South Asian 
representation 
across 
the 
nominations, and ultimately, 
award winners. This doesn’t 
exclusively apply to awards 
shows, but also on the covers 
of magazines like Elle and 
Time. For example, Mindy 
Kaling and Hasan Minhaj 
were recently featured as the 
front covers of Elle and Vanity 
Fair, respectively.
Mindy Kaling is an Indian 
American comedian and a 
success in the Hollywood 
industry: a director, writer 
and actress, known for her 
original role as Kelly Kapoor 
in “The Office.” To top it all 
off, Kaling has written two 
New York Times bestselling 
memoirs entitled, “Is Everyone 

Hanging Out Without Me?” 
and “Why Not Me?” Another 
example is “The Daily Show” 
alum Hasan Minhaj, who is 
Indian American and Muslim, 
hosts his own Netflix show 
providing a nuanced political 
commentary to global news.
When I saw the two covers 
come out, I recall feeling 
a sense of pride. It’s funny 
because it’s not like a family 
member or best friend of 
mine 
was 
on 
the 
cover. 
But as a person of color, 
there’s something especially 
impactful and personal about 
seeing someone who looks 
like you or talks like you or 
whose beliefs deeply resonate 
with yours make it big in a 
field that is predominantly 
occupied by white men. 
I look up to all the female, 

Indian-American trailblazers 
attempting 
to 
break 
the 
glass ceiling. It’s essential to 
support, share and re-share 
all 
the 
content 
produced 
by 
up-and-coming 
women 
of color to assist them in 
achieving 
their 
goals, 
no 
matter how small or large scale 
they may be. For example, 
Lilly Singh, an openly bisexual 
Indian-Canadian woman — 
better known as YouTube’s 
“Superwoman” 
— 
recently 
became the first woman of 
color to host her own late-
night talk show, “A Little Late 
with Lilly Singh.” She joined 
NBC’s league of male hosts: 
Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers 
and Conan O’Brien.
In 
2016, 
the 
University 
of 
Southern 
California 
Annenberg 
School 
for 
Communication 
and 
Journalism 
faculty 
conducted a research study 
on 
“Hollywood 
Equality: 
All Talk, Little Action.” The 
results of the study confirmed 

expectations: 
Across 
800 
films, 
representation 
of 
gender, race/ethnicity, sexual 
identity 
and 
portrayal 
of 
disability misrepresents the 
diversity of the American 
population. 
A 
few 
key, 
alarming highlights from the 
study include: Among 886 
directors, only 5.5 percent 
were Black and 2.8 percent 
were Asian. To break this 
down even further, of the 
5.5 percent black or African-
American 
directors, 
only 
three were female and of 
the 2.8 percent Asian or 
Asian-American 
directors, 
only one was female. What’s 
even more frustrating, USC 
concluded that if filmmakers 
added five female roles to 
scripts each year this would 
bring us to roughly a 50-50 
male to female ratio. This 
is a seemingly simple fix to 
address gender inequality in 
films.
As 
students 
at 
the 
University 
of 
Michigan, 
we are privileged to have 
unrestricted 
access 
to 
a 
wide variety of educational 
resources and hundreds of 
year-round 
opportunities 
to 
attend 
events 
run 
by 
multicultural 
clubs 
and 
student organizations, which 
include 
annual 
cultural 
shows, 
student 
dialogues 
and 
culturally 
informative 
fundraisers. Therefore, it is 
incumbent upon us to go out 
and support budding student 
comedians, 
activists 
and 
artists. 
This 
will 
amplify 
the representation of people 
in important platforms and 
creative spaces that lack non-
white roles. It only makes 
sense to populate industries 
with 
the 
same 
level 
of 
diversity that is reflective of 
the composition of America 
and aligns with American 
ideals of equity and inclusion.
Perhaps the most important 
line from Williams’s speech, 
“they understood that when 
you put value into a person, 
it empowers that person to 
get in touch with their own 
inherent 
value. 
And 
then 
where do they put that value? 
They put it into their work.”

Marisa Wright can be reached at 

marisadw@umich.edu.

Varna Kodoth can be reached at 

vkodoth@umich.edu.

T

his year, the University 
of 
Michigan 
saw 
the 
development of a massive 
ongoing student protest regarding 
climate 
change 
on 
campus. 
Thousands of students, faculty and 
community 
members 
attended 
the climate strikes held on the 
Diag last spring and again this fall, 
highlighting just how important 
fighting climate change is in 
students’ minds. On Oct. 10, some 
of the students who were arrested 
at last year’s sit-in at the Fleming 
Administration Building following 
the strike appeared in court to fight 
the charges.
The movement itself, headed by 
a coalition of student groups and 
individuals known as the Climate 
Action Movement at the University 
of 
Michigan, 
includes 
many 
demands involving the University’s 
current 
climate 
policies. 
One 
demand involves the complete 
divestment of fossil fuels from the 
University’s endowment. Last year, 
it was calculated using information 
from the University’s 2017 financial 
reports that roughly $1 billion of the 
total $12 billion endowment is tied 
up in investments related to fossil 
fuels. This raises two questions: 
how can the University’s carbon 
neutrality pledge and current 
climate action plans coexist with 
their investment in fossil fuels? 
And what would the actual effect 
of divestment be? 
What exactly is divestment, 
anyway? Divestment is the process 
by which a company or institution 
sells off stocks or financial assets 
for a certain cause, often associated 
with an intentional statement 
of protest. The thought process 
behind it is if a large number of 
big investors intentionally pull 
their resources, the affected party 
will be forced to cease whatever 
bad practice has drawn criticism, 
or 
simply 
become 
financially 
damaged altogether. In the case 
of the climate movement, we and 
other institutions ought to divest 
from fossil fuels to stand against 

the industry, which is responsible 
for worsening the issues of climate 
change. 
The University is no stranger 
to calls of divestment, as other 
student activists have called on 
this tactic for social change in the 
past before. The only successful 
divestment 
campaign 
on 
the 
University’s campus was back in 
the ’80s, when students pressured 
the regents to fully divest from 
companies 
that 
did 
business 
in South Africa in response to 
Apartheid. More recently, the 
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions 
movement (BDS) on campus tried 
to push the University to divest 
from Israeli companies in response 
to the ongoing dispute and violence 
in Palestine. The University put out 
a statement that its “longstanding 
policy is to shield the endowment 
from political pressures and to 
base our investment decisions 
solely on financial factors such as 
risk and return.”
Given the pretext that they 
will indeed only divest based on 
risk and returns alone, should 
they 
divest 
now? 
Based 
on 
some recent financial analysis, 
yes. According to a 2018 report 
from the Institute for Energy 
Economics and Financial Analysis, 
there is a legitimate case for 
divesting from fossil fuels. Fossil 
fuel stocks are now increasingly 
speculative. According to IEEFA, 
“Current financial stresses — 
volatile revenues, limited growth 
opportunities, and a negative 
outlook — will not merely linger, 
they will likely intensify.” Suffice it 
to say, investment in fossil fuels is 
likely to become riskier over time, 
and it would be a smart financial 
decision by the University to 
divest.
Everything is a trade-off, and 
divestment is no exception. One of 
the biggest questions surrounding 
divestment is how effective it is in 
actually fighting emissions. A 2018 
report published by the Political 
Economy 
Research 
Institute, 

found “that divestment campaigns, 
considered on their own, have 
not been especially effective as a 
means of significantly reducing 
CO2 emissions, and they are not 
likely to become more effective 
over time.” This is a concerning 
fact that needs to be kept in mind 
during these discussions.
Another issue is who gains 
control of companies once stocks 
are sold from divesting firms. It 
could be the case that if we were 
to sell our holdings, another less-
climate-friendly group could buy 
up shares, who could put less 
pressure on fossil fuel companies 
to have better practices. By 
holding onto our investments, we 
could take a so-called “one hand 
on the wheel” approach. This is a 
double-edged sword: On the one 
hand, we want the ability to nudge 
bad actors in the right direction. 
On the other, holding onto our 
assets means financing something 
we do not support.
Still, it seems wrong that 
the 
University 
holds 
onto 
such a large investment in an 
industry whose values are so 
misaligned with the University’s 
climate goals. It is important to 
remember that divestment, as 
big and complicated as it is, is 
ultimately a moral decision at 
its core. When the University 
divested from South Africa it 
wasn’t a financial decision. It was 
because students stood strong and 
demanded the University act. It is 
understandable to want to avoid 
politicizing something as big and 
important as the endowment, 
but climate change is not really 
a political issue — or at least it 
shouldn’t be. If the University 
is actually committed to being a 
leader in the climate action space, 
then divestment from fossil fuels 
needs to remain on the table as a 
serious possibility. We can’t have 
it both ways.

Timothy Spurlin can be reached at 

timrspur@umich.edu.

KAAVYA RAMACHANDHRAN | CONTACT CARTOONIST KAAVYAR@UMICH.EDU

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