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