Alves
said
having
worked in the legal sector
in New York, in politics
at the White House and
at
fintech
startups
in
Silicon Valley, she’s found
the
hardest
problems
facing the financial world
require different types of
knowledge.
“The hardest problems
to solve are ones that
require people to have a
perspective from different
sectors, and that’s how I
thought about my careers …
I needed to have experience
in all those places and
speak those languages and
understand those cultures
to be able to bring them
together and solve really
thorny problems,” Alves
said.
Harris also spoke on
regulating U.S. financial
institutions and challenges
in the new age of fintech,
where
technologies
involving
machine
learning
and
artificial
intelligence
have
the
potential
to
influence
finances. Recent changes
and
the
incorporation
of
technology
into
the
financial
industry
have
drawn
attention
to
systematic
issues
and
require policy innovation.
“Before,
fintech
data
was just your transaction
data … but now everything
is financial information,”
Harris said. “You take Uber
or Lyft, where you went
and at what time is now
tied up with a financial
service,
and
payment
apps
—
everything
has
become financial data and
everything
has
become
data on which financial
decisions about you can
be made. The trick is, as a
regulator, as a policymaker,
is how do you stay close
enough
to
industry
to
help drive an affirmative
agenda, to help catch the
no-no’s when they happen,
but not stifle innovation?”
Harris said the highly
personal nature of money
and
finance
and
the
unknown
role
fintech
companies
will
play
in
possibly perpetrating or
amending
mistrust
in
financial institutions.
“(Finance) is emotional,
it’s personal, it’s stressful,
it’s all of these things and
you’re basically expected
to
just
hand
it
over,
whether it’s the money
itself or it’s our login,”
Harris said. “When fintech
first came along they were
like, ‘We’re not the big
financial institutions.’ ...
But that also used to be the
case, sort of, with Google
and
Facebook,
so
we’ll
see how this changes. I
think we start off feeling
trustworthy and become
less so over time.”
Alves
discussed
some
of her motivations behind
organizing this dialogue.
Alves said the event took
place as part of diversity
week
at
the
Business
School,
which
aims
to
bring awareness to key
issues regarding access to
financial institutions and
trust in them.
“I thought of why I
wanted to do an event on
financial
inclusion
and
what did I want to learn
more about and what did I
also want my peers to hear
about in terms of financial
inclusion,”
Alves
said.
“Some of the main points
(were) trusting financial
institutions
and
getting
traditional banks or bigger
financial
institutions
to
actually
serve
these
underserved communities
and populations.”
Harris
elaborated
on
the
potential
for
fintech
companies
to
help decrease the cost of
providing
traditionally
“underbanked” people, or
those
without
frequent
access
to
mainstream
financial
services,
with
access to credit as well
as educating people on
financial health.
“Historically,
people
have said it’s too costly to
serve
those
populations
because they don’t create
enough revenue for the
institution,” Harris said.
“Fintech
sort
of
came
about with the promise of
we’re going to use tech to
drive down the cost and
therefore that ratio will
be going back and we’ll be
better able to serve these
people.”
Sanchez-Burks said the
subject matter of the event
was interesting, noting the
interdisciplinary aspect of
the event.
“There’s a lot of work
being done in the studio
around financial inclusion
and credit … to focus it
on fintech and financial
inclusion, the dangers and
possibilities have got to be
very interesting,” Sanchez-
Burks said. “We want to be
this hub for the University
of innovation and partner
with
other
units
on
campus.”
Harris
answered
questions from the crowd
of
students,
alumni
and
faculty
addressing
topics including fintech’s
durability during a possible
economic recession.
“A big question in the
fintech
community
is
what’s going to happen
when there’s a recession,”
Harris said. “We just don’t
know yet because we’ve
only seen fintech in this
one economic cycle.”
Harris also addressed
the potential to use fintech
to analyze wealth gaps in
the U.S. and the role that
race plays in accessing
credit
and
financial
resources.
“Because of the history
of this country around
race, there are wealth gaps,
income gaps that tend to,
themselves,
perpetuate,”
Harris said. “I’m hopeful
that
part
of
what
technology will allow us to
explore is our conceptions
about this.”
Business
freshman
Isabella
Conti
attended
the event and expressed
her interest in fintech,
considering its potential to
increase financial access in
underserved communities.
“(The
talk)
brought
up a lot of things that
I’d never thought about,
with the future of finance
and technology and how
that
intersects,”
Conti
said. “My family is Latino
and my parents are both
immigrants, so how this
could help underprivileged
people and demographics
was
really
interesting
to me, as I know a lot of
people who could benefit.”
Reporter Hannah Mackay
can be reached at mackayh@
umich.edu.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, February 13, 2020 — 3A
While Mills said liberalism
is a great idea in theory, he
noted the ideals of it have not
been carried out in practice.
He
noted
freedom
and
equality have exclusively been
the rights of certain members
of society, while others, such
as people of color and women,
have been left out. Mills said
the
conventional
narrative
portrays
modern
Western
society to be more egalitarian
than it truly is.
“We need to remember
most
Western
European
states at one time or another
had
empires
—
British,
French,
Dutch,
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Belgian
—
in
which
non-Europeans,
indigenous peoples, in some
cases, African slaves were
systemically
subordinate,”
Mills said. “Together, these
Western
countries
ruled
undemocratically
over
the
vast majority of humanity.”
With these considerations
in mind, Mills said classical
liberalism
has
historically
been both a “patriarchal”
liberalism,
supported
by
male
gender
domination,
and
“racial”
liberalism,
underwritten by white racial
domination. Yet, Mills said
the philosophy discipline has
done little to address these
historical biases.
According to Mills, part
of the problem with the
philosophy field is that it is
predominantly
white.
He
acknowledged his claim is
controversial as some say
philosophy isn’t affected by
race because it supposedly
theorizes about the general
human condition. However,
Mills
said
this
argument
misses the experiences and
issues specific to people of
color.
Mills said a consequence of
non-diverse academia is that
the education system ignores
certain aspects of history.
For example, Mills told the
audience that Japan, one of
the few non-white countries
in the post-World War I
diplomatic council the League
of Nations, advocated for a
racial equality clause in the
Treaty of Versailles. However,
the other countries rejected
the proposal.
When
Mills
asked
the
audience how many people
knew about the unsuccessful
racial equality clause, only a
handful of people raised their
hands.
“This is a prestigious, very
well-known
university,”
Mills said. “You need to ask
yourself, what does this say
about the education system
… and the broader history of
colonialism?”
Mills
spent
much
of
his
talk
criticizing
the
theories of John Rawls, a
20th-century
American
political philosopher. In his
book “A Theory of Justice,”
Rawls proposed the idea of
distributive
social
justice,
which
expanded
upon
the social contract theory
developed by Enlightenment
thinkers
John
Locke
and
Thomas Hobbes.
According
to
social
contract theory, individuals
in a state agree to give up their
freedoms and be governed
by the state in exchange
for security. Rawls added
onto
this
theory
through
the thought experiment of
a “veil of ignorance,” which
hypothesizes that a person,
before they are born, has the
opportunity to create an ideal
society.
However, the person has no
knowledge of who they will
be in this world. Because they
do not know if they will be a
part of the privileged class
or not, Rawls claims people
will create an objectively just
society out of self-interest in
case they are born without
certain privileges.
According to Mills, Rawls’s
theory does not apply to the
U.S. because Rawls sees the
country as one with racism
instead of as an inherently
racist
society.
However,
Mills said Western societies
have historically been racist
because race affects the basic
structure of these societies,
from the economy to the
main
political
and
social
institutions.
Instead
of
theorizing
about what an ideal world
would
look
like,
Mills
believed racial justice should
consider and acknowledge
racist histories and focus on
corrective justice. According
to Mills, corrective justice
entails
actions
such
as
radical
revision
of
the
prison-industrial
complex
and
perhaps
even
a
consideration of reparations.
Mill’s
revision
of
the
Rawls’s “veil of ignorance”
thought experiment, under
the
lens
of
corrective
justice,
would
aim
to
repair
historically
racist
structures.
“As a white person, you
ask yourself, I’m doing this
thought experiment … let’s
say I’m a Black woman in a
ghetto in South Side Chicago,
or let’s say I’m a Latino
somewhere in southwestern
United States or I’m a Native
American on a reservation,”
Mills said. “What structures,
what policies would I want to
see put in place to make sure
as much as I can that I’m not
radically handicapped?”
Following his talk, Mills
opened the floor to questions
from the audience.
The first person to speak in
the Q&A portion claimed Ann
Arbor is a reverse racist and
reverse sexist community that
discriminates against white
males like himself. When
people started clapping after
he said he planned to leave
the country because of this
discrimination,
he
became
angry and left the event.
Several audience members
asked Mills how to incorporate
discussions of racial justice
into
the
classroom,
both
in college courses and in
secondary
schooling.
Mills
said efforts should be made
not only to have dedicated
courses to race theory but also
to center considerations of
identity.
“See how race can be
incorporated
into
the
curriculum … because it’s
not as if you’re distorting
the material,” Mills said.
“Because
race
permeates
everything.”
Rackham
student
Gabrielle Peterson and the
rest of the Racism Lab, an
interdisciplinary
group
of scholars, attended the
event
together.
She
said
Mills’s point about the lack
of
diversity
in
academia
resonated
with
many
of
them.
“Mills’s
discussion
of
the
demographics
within
research
bodies
in
philosophy
that
influence and inform the
misrepresentations of Black
people and other minorities
was extremely helpful in
rethinking
and
reflecting
on our own experiences in
our respective disciplines,”
Peterson said.
Jessica
Castellani,
a
graduate
student
at
the
University
of
Toledo,
drove to the event with
her
classmates
and
her
professor
to
hear
Mills
speak. Castellani said she is
taking a class on critical race
theory and has been reading
Mills’s work in class.
Castellani said she talked
to
classmates
about
the
audience
member
who
brought up reverse racism.
She said she believes his
anger is a product of the fear
of having his rights taken
away.
PHILOSOPHY
From Page 1A
Catherine Marudo, Public
Health junior and president
of Phi Delta Epsilon, said
she believes that despite the
drawn-out process, it is still
worth it to apply. She also
advised
students
to
have
reasonable expectations.
“If
you’re
looking
for
clinical experience, it’s either
a hit or a miss,” Marudo said.
“You shouldn’t go in with
the
expectation
that
you
will have patient experience
since those clinical positions
go really fast. But especially
for pre-med students, any
form of service in the long-
term will go well with their
application and they should
keep reaching out, whether at
U of M Hospital or elsewhere,
to find those opportunities.”
LSA
Honors
Adviser
Stephanie Chervin addressed
the importance of clinical
experience
for
pre-med
students and advised students
to apply to other clinical
settings as well, such as the
Veterans
Affairs
Medical
Center, St. Joseph’s Mercy
and other clinics in the Ann
Arbor area.
She said she often comes
across students who complain
about
the
appointment
slots filling up or missing
deadlines.
“With
the
10,000
pre-
meds we have, it definitely
is a stressful thing for our
students trying to get into U
of M Hospital,” Chervin said.
LSA
junior
Kateryna
Karpoff is currently involved
in the Hospital Elder Life
Program, a program at the
University
Hospital.
For
those looking to volunteer,
she advised reaching out to
upperclassmen to understand
which programs allow for
more patient interaction.
“Not all volunteer positions
are equal, you do kind of have
to fight for the better ones
(with patient interaction),”
Karpoff said. “I think (initially
applying to the hospital) is a
good segue, just to get your
name in the system, and then
each semester, you can reach
out to the departments and
ask if you can be placed in a
position you’re interested in.”
Loulie Meynard, director
of volunteer services at the
University Hospital, said the
department has made changes
to the process over the years
in an attempt to make it fairer.
She
discussed
how
in
previous
years,
students
would
grab
whatever
appointment time they saw
open
without
considering
their own class schedule.
Realizing this was an issue,
the department shifted to a
lottery system and assigned
appointment times based on
the availability indicated in
the student application form.
“The only thing we got
tripped up on this time was
one of the info sessions was
scheduled before anyone got
their class schedules. So now
we are really paying attention
to when that works,” Meynard
said.
Michigan
Medicine
has
more
than
2,000
active
volunteers.
Meynard said it can be hard
to manage all of them, but
she said she attempts to work
with students on a case-by-
case basis if they’ve attended
multiple information sessions
without getting an interview
by guaranteeing them one in
the next cycle.
“We
have
a
wonderful,
terrible problem,” Meynard
said. “There are more people
in this community who want
to
volunteer
at
Michigan
Medicine than we have places
to put them.”
Daily staff reporter Varsha
Vedapudi can be reached at
varshakv@umich.edu.
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
anonymous
attack
threatens the collegiality of
the School and violates all
standards of professional
behavior,” Hanlon wrote.
Hanlon said he received
two similar emails that
summer.
These
emails
reportedly warned Hanlon
to
investigate
Philbert’s
behavior. Hanlon was also
allegedly told in person
that there were previous
complaints about Philbert.
When the University was
informed of allegations of
misconduct on Jan. 16 and
17 this year, the University
hired
Washington
D.C.-
based law firm WilmerHale
to
investigate
Philbert’s
history.
Philbert
first
came
to the University as an
assistant
professor
of
toxicology in the School
of Public Health in 1995,
later becoming an associate
professor in 2000. He was
the
associate
chair
for
research and development
in
the
Department
of
Environmental
Health
Sciences from 2000 to 2003.
Philbert was promoted to
professor in 2004 and served
as the senior associate dean
for research at the School
of Public Health before
being appointed as dean in
2010. He was approved and
began serving as provost in
2017. As provost, Philbert
presided over the Office
of
Institutional
Equity,
which is responsible for
investigating
claims
of
sexual misconduct.
In an email to The Daily,
University
spokesperson
Kim
Broekhuizen
emphasized the importance
of letting the investigation
run its course.
“It is critical that we
all
allow
the
outside
investigators to determine
the
facts,”
Broekhuizen
wrote. “While that process
is ongoing, there is very
little that we are able to
say.”
Reporter Arjun Thakkar
can be reached at arjunt@
umich.edu.
HOSPITAL
From Page 1A
PHILBERT
From Page 1A
FINTECH
From Page 1A
Song
was
elected
to the AADL board in
November 2016. In 2014,
she was appointed the
executive director of the
Ann Arbor Public Schools
Educational
Foundation,
a non-profit organization
that distributes funds to
area public schools. Song,
an alum of the University
of Michigan, is currently
a lecturer in the School of
Social Work.
Song
will
need
to
register
100
signatures
by April 21 to get on the
ballot in August. She is
holding
an
event
this
Friday in hopes of gaining
petition signatures.
She has yet to publish
a
platform,
but
she
described her motivation
to run for office in a
statement posted to her
Facebook page.
“My
training
and
instincts
are
to
make
sure people are ok and
safe.
My
upbringing
reminds me how a poor,
refugee family can claim
new identities and build
new communities,” Song
wrote. “My friends were
right. More social workers
need to run for office.”
She
also
noted
her
previous electoral victory
when she won her seat on
the Ann Arbor District
Library’s
Board
of
Trustees in 2016.
“My term ends this year
and
I’m
committed
to
fulfilling my obligations
as
Board
President,”
Song
wrote.
“However,
I’m
once
again
called
by community members
to serve, this time for
a
different
institution.
I’ve pulled petitions so
that I can be on this
November’s ballot as a
Democratic candidate for
Ann Arbor’s City Council.
The meetings are longer
but the goals are the same
when it comes to serving
the public good.”
In 2018, Song protested
a proposed amendment
to the city charter to
build a downtown park,
instead
advocating
for
the lot to be sold to
Chicago developer Core
Spaces to build a high-
rise apartment building.
Song told MLive she
thought the proposal was
fraught.
“Designating
the
majority of the block in
perpetuity as parkland,
without
the
formal
planning
process,
funding
or
public
engagement
that any other park or
development
would
undergo,
significantly
limits future options for
the
downtown
library
and
downtown
area,”
Song said.
Song is one of many
community
members
newly
running
for
City
Council
seats.
Zingerman’s
Bakehouse
baker Dan Michniewicz
declared his candidacy
for
Ward
5
on
Monday, running as a
democratic
socialist.
Lisa
Disch,
political
science professor at the
University, is running in
Ward 1. Former MLive
journalist Jen Eyer is
running in Ward 4 and
Erica Briggs is running
in Ward 5.
Daily
staff
reporters
Emma Ruberg and Julia
Rubin can be reached at
eruberg@umich.edu
and
julrubin@umich.edu.
COUNCIL
From Page 1A