2-News

I

n the Middle East, the month 
of September was marked by 
the signing of deals for peace 

and diplomatic relations between 
two countries, a very rare occurrence. 
In a part of the world marked by an 
extensive history of bloodshed, two 
agreements brokered by the U.S. 
and President Donald Trump were 
reached, with both the United Arab 
Emirates and Bahrain establishing 
official ties with Israel. 

The deals have made quite a splash 

on the world stage, and have even 
led Trump to receive nominations 
for the Nobel Peace Prize. These 
accords, signed by leaders of the 
three countries at a much-anticipated 
White House event, are sure to shift 
the regional dynamics and strategic 
reality in the Middle East for the 
benefit of all the signatory nations as 
well as the U.S.

Unlike other notable agreements 

over the last 50 years, it appears that 
the accords signed in September 
could lead to full and harmonious 
relationships between Israel, the 
U.A.E. and Bahrain. Past deals 
between Israel and Middle Eastern 
nations, namely Egypt and Jordan, 
established what has mainly been 
“cold peace,” where the states 

primarily 
communicate 
about 

security issues and resource sharing 
but do not fully normalize relations. 

The nature of these ties has almost 

certainly been influenced by the 
history of war between Israel and its 
neighbors to the east and southwest. 
Yet though Bahrain and the U.A.E 
have been hostile to Israel for much 
of its statehood, neither state has 
ever actually gone to war against 
Israel. The warm peace officialized 
through the U.S.-brokered accords 
will allow the nations to develop 
public and private economic ties, 
defense cooperation and coordinated 
research and development in efforts 
to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Considering these factors, it is 

clear that each of the three nations 
will benefit tremendously from 
full normalization. Reports have 
indicated that other countries in the 
region may be looking to follow in the 
footsteps of Abu Dhabi and Manama 
and establish diplomatic relations 
with the Jewish state. One such state 
which has increasingly been involved 
in rumors of Arab-Israeli cooperation 
is Saudi Arabia. At one point, it 
appeared that the Saudis would be 
the first Gulf state to foster ties with 
Israel, with its neighboring allies 

following suit. Instead, the Saudi 
government curiously stands pat, 
with rumors of an impending Saudi-
Israeli peace agreement continuing 
to surface.

Among the reasons why officials 

in Riyadh may be holding out on 
establishing relations with Israel, 
perhaps the primary factor thus far 
has been the opinion of Saudi Arabia’s 
King Salman bin Abdulaziz. Over the 
years, the king has avidly promoted 
the creation of a Palestinian state 
alongside Israel, and has reiterated 
that a two-state solution to the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict would 
be a precondition for full relations 
with Israel, as outlined in the 2002 
Arab Peace Initiative. Salman has 
remained consistent in this position 
even recently, and all statements 
from him have indicated that Riyadh 
will hold out for the creation of a 
Palestinian state for official relations 
with Israel to get started.

Salman’s vision has appeared at 

times to be quite different from that of 
his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin 
Salman. Last month, The Wall Street 
Journal reported friction within 
the House of Saud about whether to 
follow the U.A.E. and Bahrain’s lead 
and strike an agreement with Israel. 

In his considerations, the crown 

prince appears to place high value 

in a possible relationship and sees 
Jerusalem as a key future ally in Saudi 
Arabia’s longstanding conflict with 
Iran. The Iranian regime considers 

both countries — as well as other 

Sunni Muslim states in the region 
— as bitter enemies and threats to 
its goal of a new Middle East, with 
Tehran as the center of power. 

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have 

long dealt with Iranian proxies on 
their doorsteps that have overturned 
or destabilized local governments 
and significantly hurt populations in 
the area. Further, both nations are 
recipients of significant military aid 
from the U.S. With their common 
challenges and regional perspectives, 
a 
collaborative 
diplomatic 

relationship could be significantly 

beneficial for both states. To his 

credit, Mohammed has realized that 
if Saudi Arabia wishes to maintain 
and improve its standing in the region, 
it must look to any possible friends for 
support against the Islamic Republic 
of Iran, especially one with such 
substantial economic, technological 
and military prowess.

It is also possible that after 

diplomatic relations between Saudi 

Arabia and Israel are established, the 
prospects for a two-state solution 
could be even greater. Palestinian 
officials may be more inclined to 
seriously come to the negotiating 
table once they realize that their cause 
is no longer a barrier towards growing 
Arab reconciliation with Israel. 

Additionally, 
Israel’s 
leaders 

may feel more secure in reaching 
an arrangement if they feel that 
their Arab allies will assure that 
the 
Palestinians 
honor 
their 

commitments and fully abide by 
the terms of a future peace accord. 
The strife between Israel and the 
Palestinians has its roots in a conflict 
that has spanned over a century. With 
no immediate end in sight, Riyadh 
should not wait for a resolution to 
strengthen its position in an ever-
turbulent region.

With these potential outcomes 

in mind, Salman should become 
the next in what will hopefully 
be a long list of leaders to take 
advantage of the opportunity to 
establish diplomatic relations with 
Israel. With full normalization, 
Saudi Arabia will be able to secure 
the economic and strategic benefits 
that come with having Israel in 
one’s corner, while taking a step 

to promote the Israeli-Palestinian 
peace for which he has advocated 
for years. 

In 
international 
affairs, 
that 

certainly qualifies as a win-win 
situation, and Salman should not be 
afraid to make the move. Though 
normalization with Israel might not 
appear to be popular domestically, 
Saudi citizens will surely benefit 
from a strong, often like-minded 
partner, as well as the influx of 
foreign investment and financial 
opportunities. If such a deal also 
brings Israelis and Palestinians closer 
to a solution, few Saudis will be able to 
argue against it. 

In a region where violence often 

begets more violence, perhaps some 
peace will lead to even more peace. 
As states in and out of the Mideast 
continue to discover the advantages 
of making Israel into a friend, the 
House of Saud should waste no 
time in doing so itself. With threats 
mounting and a crisis developing 
around the globe, ties with the 
Jewish state will only increase 
Riyadh’s well-being and stability at 
home and abroad.

W

ithin 
the 
Big 
Ten 

conference, 
including 

at the University of 

Michigan, women do not have an 
equal opportunity to participate in 
and benefit from college sports this 
fall when compared to men. Because 
of this, there is a compelling case to be 
made that the Big Ten is operating in 
violation of Title IX, which prohibits 
gender discrimination. Women and 
gender non-binary students who play 
fall women’s sports could potentially 
have strong Title IX claims against 
universities within the Big Ten.

In 
making 
the 
unanimous 

decision to reopen football this 
fall, and football alone, the Big Ten 
doesn’t seem to be following the 
general wording of the Title IX of the 
Education Amendments Act of 1972, 
20 U.S.C.§§1681 which states:

“No person in the United States 

shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded 
from participation in, be denied 
the benefits of or be subjected to 
discrimination under any education 
program or activity receiving Federal 
financial assistance.”

Right now, some male athletes 

can practice and play, but no female 
athletes have been given a comparable 
opportunity this fall. Players for the 
University of Iowa Hawkeyes football 
team rejoice in knowing that they will 
return to play Oct. 24, while teams 
like the Minnesota Golden Gophers 
women’s volleyball team fervently 
hope for the chance to do the same. 
There 
is 
uncertainty 
regarding 

the reinstatement and timeline of 
women’s fall sports following the 
NCAA announcement of spring 
championship dates. This has created 
an assumption that these sports will 
be played in spring — but with no clear 
plan from the Big Ten.

Why wasn’t Title IX or equal 

opportunity considered by the Big 
Ten Return to Competition Task 
Force? The very same 14 university 
presidents in the Big Ten who voted 
unanimously to open conference 
football signed the National College 
Athletic 
Association 
Presidential 

Pledge: The Pledge and Commitment 
to Promoting Diversity and Gender 
Equity in Intercollegiate Athletics. 
This is remarkable because only 81.2% 
of Division I university presidents 
signed on to a pledge which largely 
promises to uphold existing civil 
rights laws. Setting law aside, the 
Big Ten presidents should be held 
accountable for failing to uphold this 
agreement. 

An argument could be made that 

women aren’t being excluded from 
equal participation because they 
might get a chance to compete in the 
spring semester. This logic does not 
hold up well to Title IX statute text 
or case precedent. The “scheduling 
of games and practice time” is listed 
in the 34 C.F.R. § 106.41(c) as a way of 
measuring equal opportunity. 

The NCAA’s own handbook on 

Title IX compliance cites an example 
eerily similar to the current situation, 
which states that “institutions need 
to look at all sports.” The handbook 
continues with, “... if football is the 
only program brought back early, 
the fact that there is no like program 
will not excuse the school’s decision 
to bring back members of one sex 
and not the other.” Several past cases 
such as Parker v. Franklin County 
and McCormick v. School Dist. of 
Mamaroneck have established that 
scheduling disparities between male 
and female athletic competitions 
do in fact qualify as a denial of equal 
opportunity. 

One of the ways Title IX 

compliance is measured is by whether 
a disparity exists between men and 
women in varsity sports participation 
and making sure that this ratio is 
approximately proportional to the 
gender ratio of the student body at 
large; this was clarified in the case 
Cohen v. Brown. For example, the 
University of Michigan has a precise 
ratio of 50% male to 50% female 
undergraduate students, so athletic 
opportunities should match. 

Adding to the disparity, the 

men participating in football this 
fall receive more benefits than in a 
regular season. The same Title IX 
statute, as listed above, specifically 
lists the provision of medical services 
as a way by which to measure equal 
opportunity 
in 
intercollegiate 

athletics. Football players this fall 
not only will be able to receive daily 
antigen tests to help detect infection 
of COVID-19, but extensive cardiac 
support care in case of a positive test 
— including giving positive players 
easy access to cardiac MRI machines, 
even when none is available in 
the local area. The Big Ten press 
release regarding medical protocols 
amid football’s return did state that 
“eventually all Big Ten sports will 
require testing protocols before they 
can resume competition,” but it is 
unclear when those practices will 
be instituted across the board for 
athletes. 

To fully comply with Title IX, 

one would expect an equivalent 
opportunity for female athletes. This 
has not happened. With statistics like 
these, every single woman or gender-
non-binary varsity athlete could have 
a potential Title IX claim.

A counter argument might be 

that football is a special case and thus 
should be looked at differently under 
Title IX. Football is a large source 
of revenue for universities, and so 
perhaps it is justified to treat this 
sport differently when considering 
COVID-19 reopenings given budget 
woes. However, this argument has 
implications beyond Title IX. The 
NCAA and member universities have 
vigorously defended lawsuits from 
male football and basketball players 
requesting adequate compensation 
for the use of their labor and likenesses 
by citing participation in an amateur 
sport. If the Big Ten defends Title 
IX claims with a “football is special” 
defense, this could undermine the 
avoidance of paying football players in 
other ways. 

The litigation regarding Title IX 

violations and COVID-19 has already 
begun, foreshadowing more to come. 
The seminal case Cohen v. Brown 
was recently reopened due to new 
allegations of Brown’s violation of 
the decades-old settlement due to 
COVID-19 budget cuts. On Sept. 25, 
2020, a class action complaint was 
filed against the University of Iowa 
for providing inequitable access to 
athletic opportunities for women, a 
shortcoming further aggravated by 
eliminating the women’s swimming 
and diving program. 

We 
as 
students, 
alumni, 

community members and sports 
fans deserve answers. In responding 
to a crisis, which values are lost in 
rushed decision-making and why? 
Why did university presidents not 
act in accordance with their pledge 
to 
provide 
equal 
opportunities 

for women when they voted to 
reopen football? At the University of 
Michigan, will women and gender 
non-binary varsity athletes in fall 
sports file a class-action suit like their 
colleagues at the University of Iowa? 
Is the benefit of one partial season 
of football with a high risk of injury 
to players, including possible death, 
worth the consequences?

9 — Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Time to revitalize the environmental movement

RILEY DEHR | COLUMN

The next step for peace

NOAH ENTE | COLUMN

Laura Miller is a first-year student 

at the University of Michigan Law 

School and can be reached at 

llll@umich.edu.

In the decision to revive fall football, Big 

Ten fails to acknowledge Title IX

LAURA MILLER | COLUMN

I 

shifted my car into neutral 
and drifted off I-80 in western 
Nebraska 
and 
into 
my 

hometown for a weekend visit. As he 
has done to thousands of travelers to 
enter North Platte, Neb., since 1963, a 
stern-faced Buffalo Bill glared down 
at me with a rifle in his hands from a 
50-foot billboard. Behind him stands 
the famous Fort Cody, an imposing 
wooden building with plaster grizzly 
bears and mannequins guarding its 
doors. Inside is the story of the Wild 
West and its most famous celebrity, 
William F. Cody. 

Earning the nickname “Buffalo 

Bill” after killing approximately 
4,000 bison in eight months, the 
hunter became an instrumental tool 
in the U.S. government’s mission to 
starve the area’s Native American 
tribes, who depended on the vast 
herds that once roamed the Great 
Plains. In his later years, he began 
the famous “Wild West Show” 
at his ranch on the outskirts of 
town, garnering worldwide, A-list 
celebrity status. European royalty 
and famous Westerners like Annie 
Oakley came here to dine with the 
world’s most famous man and hunt 
the now critically-endangered North 
American Bison. 

I went to his ranch, now a state 

park, later that night and admired 
the small herd of bison kept fenced 
up for events and tourist appeal. I 
looked out at the open fields behind 
them, scattered with grazing cattle, 
and couldn’t help but feel pity for 
the magnificent animals, lying in 
the mud in front of me in their small 
enclosure. Every North American 
Bison can trace its lineage back to 
the final 300 that escaped extinction 
— the last of 60 million that once 

roamed the Great Plains. Their 

tragic story is often recited as another 
regrettable American mistake of our 
past, but its lessons about extinction, 
and narrow escape from it, are more 
relevant today than ever.

Fifteen 
thousand 
University 

of Michigan students and faculty 
marched through the streets on 
April 22, 1970, in the first celebration 
of a new holiday called Earth Day. 
Following in the footsteps of pioneers 
like Rachel Carson and Jane Goodall, 
the new environmental movement 
immediately had to confront a never-
ending and exponentially growing 

list of long-existing issues. While the 
success of these battles is difficult 
to measure, it’s safe to say that the 
movement has been a general failure. 

Major 
issues 
like 
ocean 

acidification, 
deforestation, 
the 

collapse of biodiversity and over-use 
of resources have not yet been solved 
while newer threats like climate 
change, overfishing and politicization 
of environmental issues have been met 
with less than sufficient resistance. 
The result is the apocalyptic United 
States we now live in, where national 
disasters have forced Americans in 
California or Iowa or the Gulf Coast 
from their homes as climate refugees. 

Since the pandemic began, my 

newsfeed has been filled with an 
increasing 
number 
of 
terrifying 

studies and headlines that show just 
how bad things have truly become. 
Back in June, The New York Times 
released a report stating that over 500 
species will likely go extinct in the next 
20 years, a number of extinctions that 
would naturally occur over 16,000 
years if not for the environmental 
issues impacting Earth. Since the 
1970s alone, over 70% of the world’s 
animal populations have been wiped 
out, leaving more than a million 
species confronting extinction.

These 
levels 
of 
biodiversity 

loss haven’t been seen since a 
meteor wiped out the dinosaurs 
65 million years ago and are a sign 
that humanity’s efforts to grow 
sustainably have failed disastrously. 
The COVID-19 pandemic, which 
is itself the hypothesized result of 
poaching and wildlife trafficking, is 
perhaps the greatest example of what 
complications will continue to arise 
as we delete nature from existence. 

Since March, this disaster has 

killed over 200,000 Americans and 
made the world an increasingly 
dangerous and stressful place to live. 
One, often over-exaggerated, silver-
lining throughout all of this has been 
the worldwide drop in emissions and 
pollution due to national lockdowns. 
It was the first time in nearly a 
century, and the only time since the 
environmental movement began, that 
the world experienced a decrease in 
human activity and greenhouse gas 
emissions. Humanity received a rare 
opportunity to watch nature have a 
brief moment to breathe. 

Now, as the world has been set 

back into motion, these benefits can 
seem like a distant memory, but they 
shouldn’t be treated as flukes of the 
pandemic. The changes needed to 
stop and reverse our current mass 
extinction will require a lot more 
than those COVID-19 forced upon us. 
Banning the sale of gasoline-powered 
cars, drastically altering our diets and 
subsistence farming are some of the 
few things that must be encouraged 
if we want to spare a million species 
from extinction and save millions 
of people who would otherwise be 
killed by the effects of a crumbling 
environment. The evidence is clear 
that we have built a flawed society that 
must be massively overhauled to deal 
with the realities of our world. 

With the largest nations in the 

world 
simultaneously 
deciding 

and legislating on how to recover, 
grow and develop to stimulate their 
economies, the pandemic could be 
the catalyst for this restructuring. 
Pioneering environmentalists must 
regroup, re-strategize and re-learn 
how 
to 
achieve 
environmental 

stability in a post-pandemic world. If 
we learn how to sufficiently influence 
policy, economics and psychology 
to encourage sustainable practices, 
then we might be able to avoid the 
various crises that currently await us. 
With many scientists warning that 
major changes must occur within 
the next 20 years, this may be our 
last chance. With more motivated, 
educated and talented people fighting 
for our environment than ever before, 
I am hopeful and terrified in equal 
measure. 

While Buffalo Bill went to great 

heights to inflict great environmental 
damage, almost every moment of 
our modern-day lives comes at the 
expense of another living thing. 
This lifestyle is one that has copied 
practices like his and emulated them 
on a mass scale, with an environmental 
footprint higher than any imaginable 
a century ago. Environmental ruin is 
not inescapable, but only if society uses 
this current moment of reckoning 
and inflection to confront it. Now, 
with the world at a crossroads, the 
environmental movement has the 
potential to solve these problems once 
and for all. 

Riley Dehr can be reached at rdehr@

umich.edu.

Noah Ente can be reached at 

noahente@umich.edu.

Design courtesy of Samuel Turner 

Design courtesy of Shannon Stocking 

