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Textile Mobilities across Medieval Afro-Eurasia
No full textTextiles counted among the most precious and prized categories of material culture in the medieval world: made with care in specialized workshops, handed down over generations as part of family wealth, repurposed until threadbare for use as dress and furnishings, serving as diplomatic gifts and luxury trade goods, cloth played a major cultural role across premodern societies. Such importance stands in contrast to how fabrics are often viewed by students today, as cheaply-made, disposal material outsourced from distant factories for mass consumption. The disjuncture between premodern attitudes toward cloth and prevailing views today offers a compelling entry point for students to contemplate historical continuities and difference through the lens of a universally familiar medium of textiles.
This pedagogical file considers textiles’ mobilities across premodern Afro-Eurasia to explore medieval global networks through a focus on exchanges evidenced in material culture. The presented examples focus on textiles in European and North American museum collections, thus layering in also more recent mobilities of these objects as artworks with modern collecting histories
Antitrust Live: The New Blockchain Era of Antitrust
Get PDFThe reports of antitrust’s death at the hands of decentralized blockchains were an exaggeration. The premise is logical: decentralized markets should mitigate the need for antitrust laws, which typically address abuses of power by, and secret collusion among, centralized firms in concentrated markets. Indeed, blockchains strive to prevent market structures that facilitate collusion and monopolization in the first place through decentralization, a form of antitrust self-regulation. And blockchain communities are debating and deciding how to effect this self-regulation, with the potential for autonomous implementations of market constraints designed to preserve decentralization, in real time and in public. All of this means that antitrust principles are very much alive on the blockchain. However, there exists a conflict: recent efforts to self-regulate antitrust may constitute per se violations of the very laws that such efforts are intended to preempt.
The first to identify this conflict, this Article proposes that antitrust is entering a new blockchain era, one that is self-regulated and transparent, but not without risks. This Article then argues that self-regulation efforts in the blockchain context that would normally receive per se condemnation by U.S. courts, like price fixing, should instead receive more fulsome reviews under the rule of reason. The procompetitive potential of such self-regulation, combined with judicial inexperience in complex blockchain markets, warrants such an approach
Letter from the Editor: Scarlet Au, Kairaluchi Oraedu
No full textDear Reader,
In 2023, the Columbia University Journal of Global Health continued to impact the Columbia campus community and beyond. Through leading discussions in public health and engaging with faculty across institutions, we strive to share research perspectives from around the world that confront the challenges of achieving equitable and accessible healthcare. We continue to celebrate the importance of research and the underlying rigor of the scientific process. We are excited to share our newest Spring 2023 issue with our readers.
Our community engagement efforts in New York resulted in multiple collaborations with Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health faculty and the New York City Fire Department, which has engaged the Columbia University student body in relevant and timely global health topics. We distributed fentanyl testing kits and partnered with the New York City Fire Department for a CPR training event to educate students with useful skills in addressing health emergencies. In February, we hosted a panel discussion titled “Black Professionals in Public Health”, which featured guest speakers Dr. Paris Adkins-Jackson–Assistant Professor at the Columbia Department of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences–and Dr. Kiros Berhane–Chairman of Biostatistics at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. Adkins-Jackson and Berhane addressed how they designed research studies to investigate racial disparities in access to care and navigated public health and academia from a personal perspective.
In recognizing the importance of having accessible and open scientific communication between the scientific community and the general public, our “What is Global Health?” podcast and blog has served as an active online platform to foster discussions with Columbia faculty. Our recent blog posts share perspectives on topics from women’s menstrual health to global hunger. The newest episode of the podcast features a discussion on utilizing data science to inform public health with Dr. Mary Beth Terry from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
This Spring 2023 issue explores public health topics including a novel community participatory approach to violence intervention programs for Latino youth, challenges in accessing maternity care for immigrants and medical interpretation. We would like to express our gratitude towards our journal team, faculty advisors Esther Jackson and Professor James Colgrove, authors and peer reviewers for their submissions and contributions without which our journal could not exist.
Sincerely,Scarlet Au & Kairaluchi OraeduCo-Editors-in-Chief, The Columbia University Journal of Global Healt
Teachers' perceptions of parents in rural African communities
No full textTeachers’ perspectives of their pupils’ parents are a critical element of the relationship between schools, families, and communities. However, in various rural African communities, teachers’ views of parents’ perspectives and practices around schooling are primarily ones of deficit rather than strength. This paper deepens this literature by offering insight into teachers’ perspectives in two rural communities in Nigeria. Using an ethnographic approach and applying concepts from the capability approach, this paper explores teachers’ perceptions of parents’ values in relation to their children’s schooling (parental functionings) and their views of the extent to which parents are able to pursue these functionings. The findings resonate with the existing deficit perspectives in the literature. In addition, the findings expand the literature by revealing an empathetic dimension to these deficit perspectives, suggesting that current evidence around teachers’ uniformly deficit perspectives of parents offers only a partial view. Illuminating the empathy that underpins teachers’ perspectives offers the possibility of finding common ground between schools and families which may widen opportunities for forging or deepening positive parent-teacher relationships which support children’s social, emotional, and academic development
Not Just Non-Consensual Pelvic Exams: The Need for Expressed Consent for All Intimate Tasks for Elective Procedures
Get PDFPhoto by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
ABSTRACT
Medical professionals sometimes perform intimate tasks while prepping patients for surgical procedures. These tasks may include urinary catheterization, underwear or gown removal, pubic hair removal, and groin sanitization. The intimate nature of these tasks calls for informed consent. Performed without consent, these intimate functions can result in long-term psychological harm. Given the parallels in the arguments for regulating unauthorized sensitive exams, like pelvic exams under anesthesia, policymakers and legislators should expand their efforts to require express consent for all intimate encounters that occur before, during, and after elective medical procedures to protect all patients.
INTRODUCTION
Healthcare facilities should be safe places where individuals seek healing without fear of assault on their personal dignity, bodily sanctity, autonomy, and humanity. Patients who have undergone non-consensual pelvic, rectal, prostate, and other sensitive exams and procedures – whether for diagnostic or educational purposes – have discovered that this is not always the case after emerging from the experience with a sense of violation and betrayal. Proponents of requiring explicit consent for these invasive exams have likened them to sexual abuse, which disempowers, humiliates, and degrades victims, resulting in long-lasting psychological harm. However, these sensitive exams and procedures are not the only sources of traumatic, unauthorized intimate experiences in medical settings. Indeed, both male and female patients who have endured urinary catheterization, underwear or gown removal that resulted in intimate exposure, pubic hair removal, groin sanitization, and other such intimately invasive preparatory practices without their knowledge or explicit consent have expressed the same sense of bodily violation and psychological harm as patients who have undergone non-consensual sensitive exams. While some patients have no concern over these invasive ancillary procedures, others take issue with medical staff manipulating their private spaces without express consent. This paper explores how to resolve the issues that cause harm in some patients due to nonconsensual intimate tasks associated with procedures.
I. Background
Some surgeries include prepping private areas of a patient’s body that are not directly involved in the procedure to mitigate contingencies that would require access to veins and arteries.[1] Given that physicians commonly exclude information about prep and that medical staff perform these tasks after anesthesia, some patients may be initially unaware of these intimate functions and have not provided express consent.
While the media have begun to share the accounts of individuals, mostly women, who have spoken up about their unwanted medical exams,[2] the voices of those suffering the same psychological harm after experiencing other non-consensual intimate encounters in medical settings have remained largely unheard. Yet, there are some who have shared their accounts anonymously on the website of Medical Patient Modesty (MPM), a non-profit organization that seeks to educate patients about potential privacy issues that may occur in medical settings. A survey of these accounts suggests a wide array of bodily violations. In addition to women, a significant number of men submitted their stories. The following are a few excerpts: [3]
“John” from Iowa stated that he was traumatized after discovering that staff had removed the disposable underwear they had given him and clipped his pubic hair while he was sedated for a procedure that involved incisions around his knee. He claimed that nobody ever mentioned his groin. John asserts that medical personnel deceived him into believing they were protecting his bodily privacy by providing him with disposable underwear and then removing it when he was sedated.
Jeffrey Fox from Virginia said that he suffers from PTSD as a result of a female nurse clipping his pubic hair for open heart surgery. He noted that staff instructed him not to shave his chest, implying that they would perform the task. But nobody mentioned anything about his groin.
Kevin reported that his sister sexually abused him at a young age and that he was retraumatized as an adult when he awakened from hernia surgery to discover that staff had clipped his pubic hair and inserted a urinary catheter without his knowledge or consent.
Due to anxiety as a result of trauma from an incident involving genital exposure, RM from Pennsylvania made multiple appeals to the doctor to leave his underwear on during an angiogram centering around his wrist. After the doctor denied his request, he unwillingly relented and ultimately suffered further trauma when staff clipped his pubic hair and left him exposed. RM stated that clipping his pubic hair for a procedure centering around his wrist was “completely unnecessary” and an “unforgivable violation” of his privacy.
Beth from Oklahoma submitted an account on behalf of her husband who was traumatized after awakening during hand surgery to discover that staff had stripped him naked.
“Man Who Had Carpal Tunnel Surgery” refused to remove his underwear only for staff to take them off after he had been anesthetized.
“Lynn” from Mississippi stated that she suffers from PTSD after a dermatologist lifted the waistband of her shorts, peered down, and placed his hand against her groin for the stated purpose of taking her pulse. The event occurred when she was a young girl, and she was retraumatized decades later when medical staff subjected her husband to a similar unwanted intimate encounter while he was sedated for a procedure involving his knee. She says that both she and her husband have suffered a sharp decline in their mental health as a result of their medical experiences.
Marie stated that she unsuccessfully appealed to medical staff to leave her underwear on and then was traumatized when they exposed her genitals while positioning her for knee surgery.
“Concerned human being” from Kentucky relayed the account of his wife, an RN who had expressed concerns to him over witnessing unnecessary intimate exposure of patients only to find herself on the receiving end of a dignity violation when she awoke after her procedure to fix a tendon in her finger to find staff had removed her gown and laid it across her during transport out of the OR.
These accounts are just a few of the first-hand narratives on the MPM website. I do not use them to make assumptions about the scope of the problem. Instead, this paper suggests these narratives are an important source for any advocates for changes that better respect patient dignity.
II. Consent
It is apparent that medical professionals did not inform these patients of the intimate encounters they would experience. As many attest, patients often begrudgingly remove their underwear when medical professionals instruct them to do so before procedures. Patients such as the ones from the MPM website may not understand why they must remove their underwear and may not wish to ask. Some acquiesce to the requests for underwear removal because they do not wish to reschedule a long-awaited procedure or appointment. Thus, they may experience duress after unsuccessfully appealing to leave their underwear on. While medical professionals may argue that there are medical reasons for these intimate functions, such as access to arteries, these explanations do not account for a lack of consent. Simply declaring that a task or procedure is routine and necessary does not render clinicians' actions ethical or less of a violation.[4]
Patients have a right to know if their private areas will be involved at any point during a medical experience so they can determine for themselves if these intimate procedures and tasks are reasonable. Some patients may not agree that underwear removal is essential, that clipping pubic hair and cleansing the groin is necessary, or that urinary catheters are required. Multiple patients from the website appear to share this sentiment and expressed feelings of confusion and distress over the fact that their providers had never informed them of these intimate preparatory tasks. Assuredly, they believe they never truly consented to the experiences medical staff ultimately subjected them to.
III. Informed Consent
Informed consent is a shared decision-making process by which practitioners discuss the benefits and risks of undergoing or rejecting an invasive procedure. Providers must disclose sufficient information to enable patients to make informed decisions and then document consent in a consent form.[5] Ultimately, clinicians do not know what patients find important. They document consent in a vague form that the medical community can interpret to the disadvantage of patients. But informed consent transcends a signature on a form.[6] As one bioethicist notes regarding intimate medical exams, “Clearly, standard consent forms fail to give patients the granularity they need to properly consent.”[7] I argue that consent forms should name the ancillary intimate tasks that doctors and medical staff plan to perform, especially those that patients might not expect, and when staff will conduct such tasks under anesthesia without the opportunity for patients to verbally consent at the moment. Obtaining informed consent for intimate preparatory steps should be a requirement, just as obtaining informed consent for the procedure is.
Consents are a version of waivers that patients present as right holders of their bodies for medical workers to access limited body parts for a limited amount of time.[8] When a violation of this waiver occurs, a patient’s bodily autonomy and sanctity is violated. Informed consent is the cornerstone of patients’ rights, and understanding is the cornerstone of informed consent. A patient can only understand – and consent to – a procedure as a physician explains it. Due to the knowledge asymmetry in medical settings, patients rely on the fiduciary relationship with their physician to safeguard their physical and psychological well-being. To adhere to ethical standards, medical professionals should include details about surgical prep when the tasks required are intimately invasive. For example, medical professionals should disclose tasks like removing undergarments and shaving intimate areas in advance to allow patients to ask any questions about the necessity of those tasks and then properly consent or withhold consent. Deliberately withholding information patients would find important is tantamount to lying because a deceptive person “acts in such a way that the other person can never agree with how she or he is being treated.”[9] Therefore, it is understandable – and expected – that the patients from the MPM website, like individuals who have experienced a non-consensual sensitive medical exam, could feel betrayed.
These intimate tasks involved in preparing patients for procedures should be included in the informed consent process. Some ethicists and medical professionals contend that convenience is a reason why providers exclude information about sensitive procedures and suggest that hospitals are concerned that patients would decline procedures if they were aware of ancillary sensitive exams and tasks, prompting them to change their practices.[10]
Maggie from the MPM website, who was distressed over learning that an anesthesiologist had administered an amnesiac drug and then discovered from her records that her surgical team consisted mostly of men after her provider assured her beforehand that all the staff would be female, reported that her doctor and hospital responded to her complaints with, “that's why people are sedated. Hospitals/surgeons don't want patients to know what's happening during surgery—it's not necessary. Most patients like you would just object, so sedation helps everyone.”[11] This approach is paternalistic, insulting, and harmful. Performing a procedure after choosing not to seek consent out of fear that a patient would reject it “violates the very concepts of consent, patient autonomy, and individual rights.”[12]
IV. Implied Consent
Implied consent is another reason why medical community members believe that express consent for preparatory procedures is unnecessary. They allege patients implicitly consent to these tasks when consenting to the general procedure. Implied consent assumes that the patient possesses prior knowledge and expectations that medical personnel could perform a specific task, and thus, there is a presumption of consent. Medical staff are presuming consent, yet patients may feel they have done nothing to imply consent.[13] Not all patients anticipate medical staff accessing intimate areas of their body while prepping for a non-intimate procedure.
Relying on implied consent undermines the well-documented right to refuse treatment because of the lack of information. Medical personnel deprive patients like the individuals from the MPM website of the right to determine what happens to their bodies, particularly their most private parts. Assuming that patients have implicitly consented to intimate preparatory tasks for a non-intimate procedure denies them the right to safeguard their bodily sanctity themselves and forces patients to adhere to the provider’s concept of dignity.
Relying on implied consent is an abuse of a provider's privileged position of power. Medical harm results from “not only … a physical perpetration but as an act of power of one person over another'' and that “Patients [and] family members [are] burdened…by the thoughtless and insensitive exercise of power."[14] Abusing a privileged position of power creates an intimidating and unwelcoming environment, especially for modest individuals and vulnerable members of society, such as sexual assault victims who are hyper-protective of their bodily privacy, sanctity, and autonomy.
In the context of sexual assault, “A sleeping, unconscious, or incompetent person cannot consent.”[15] Federal law, state laws, and university policies address consent, also in the context of sexual assault. For example, the University of Iowa’s sexual misconduct policy defines consent as “knowing, voluntary, and clear permission by word or unambiguous action.”[16] This provides a clear definition of consent as it applies specifically to intimate areas of the body the policy defines as “breasts, buttock, groin, or genitals.” As with sexual consent, patients must be informed of the activity to which they are consenting when they are conscious. Federal and state law, along with university policy that also governs associated teaching hospitals, do not allow implied consent regarding a patient’s private parts in the context of rape or sexual assault. I suggest that they should extend this prohibition on implied consent to medicine, with the exception of emergency situations.
Federal and state laws criminalize non-consensual sexual contact either directly or through clothing with intimate areas of the body, specifically the “anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks.”[17] Medical professionals would not generally view pre-surgical hair clipping and gown and undergarment removal as sexual in nature. Yet some patients feel otherwise. This paper highlights their perspective rather than assessing the reasonableness of their feelings. I argue that informed consent would protect individuals like those who reported being personally harmed by nonconsensual intimate contact ancillary to medical procedures.
Some patients do not think of their private areas in a detached or neutral manner.[18] For example, outside the medical context, research suggests that individuals equate clipping pubic hair to sexual activity.[19] One might argue that in the medical context, the patient may feel hair removal has a sexual aspect, and its removal is a violation. Hair removal is an example of the inability of medical practice to “abstract itself from the culture in which it operates.”[20] Providers cannot expect or force a sudden paradigm shift in how patients view and value their intimate boundaries simply because they enter a medical environment.
V. Patient Psychological Harm
Malicious intent does not have to be present for a medical professional to inflict damage given that that medical harm is “not necessarily the intention, but the byproduct of action.”[21] The patient narratives cited on the MPM website describe various harms that patients experienced due to ancillary medical tasks that involved exposing or touching intimate body parts for non-intimate procedures. In a study of women undergoing gynecological procedures, a “lack of information given to the patient…and a lack of clearly understood consent” led some women to develop PTSD.[22] I assert that these nonconsensual ancillary tasks evoke similar reactions.
Multiple patients from the MPM website expressed feelings of humiliation, embarrassment, and disrespect after staff exposed their genitals, clipped their pubic hair, and inserted a urinary catheter without their prior knowledge. Several patients from the MPM website stated that they had experienced some form of previous intimate violations and were retraumatized by their medical encounters. Lynn’s account, in particular, of second-hand re-traumatization via her husband’s experience illustrates that the damage caused by non-consensual intimate exposure and contact in medical settings is far-reaching.
Some argue that medical staff cannot harm the psyche of patients who are anesthetized.[23] The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) even notes that “Our current protocol seems to be ‘what they don't know won't hurt them.’"[24] But patients have awakened naked during procedures that began with their underwear and gown on. And the patients from the MPM website relayed a sense of trauma when they learned afterward that a staff member had clipped their pubic hair or inserted a urinary catheter. A patient’s conscious state should not dictate what is ethically appropriate when it comes to viewing and contacting private areas.
Studies show that patients who feel violated after they experience nonconsensual intimate exposure and contact have strong convictions regarding their rights and values and ultimately forsake medical care as a result of their concerns.[25] The patients from the MPM website claimed they lost their faith, trust, and respect for the medical community due to their intimate medical experiences. Therefore, the frame of reference should not center around how medical professionals perceive their actions but that patients may feel that nonconsensual intimate encounters are sexual violations.[26]
VI. Discussion and Recommendations
Some have acknowledged a need to preserve patient modesty and dignity better, resulting in improvements in gown design and the development of surgical undergarments.[27] Additionally, some medical organizations have called for clipping hair only when necessary.[28] However, these improvements would be more effective if all hospitals and doctors followed more rigorous modesty protocols. For instance, providing improved gowns and surgical undergarments to patients is pointless if medical staff remove them without the patient’s knowledge, such as in the case of John. The issue is informed consent. It appears that medical professionals do not need permission to visually and physically access intimate areas of their patients’ bodies.
The medical community ignored sustained calls for explicit consent for sensitive medical exams for years.[29] Eventually, public awareness and scrutiny of the issues surrounding non-consensual pelvic, rectal, and other sensitive exams led to an increasing number of states passing laws requiring express consent for pelvic exams and other invasive actions. These and others should consider requiring express consent for all intimate functions, not just exams for the sake of uniformity and consistency. It is understandable that clinicians need to access private areas for serious medical reasons. But medical professionals should explain their rationale, include this information on consent forms, and give patients the opportunity to question their validity and consider all key aspects of a medical procedure – including intimately invasive preparatory functions – prior to consenting.
CONCLUSION
The core issue patients from the MPM website expressed is a loss of autonomy. From the viewpoint of the patients whose narratives are included on the MPM website, the nonconsensual intimate tasks related to medical procedures caused harm. Patients should be able to learn about all intimate functions that staff may perform while preparing for surgery. The patient would then determine whether to refuse the ancillary task or the entire procedure. While some argue attaining informed consent for such tasks is impractical, I suggest that it is an ethical imperative. When patients undergo intimate tasks that they did not expect, some experience significant psychological harm, sometimes exacerbated by re-traumatization.
Another effect is distrust of the medical community. Trust is the foundation of medical care. Patients must have confidence in a provider’s expertise, professionalism, communication, and procedural technique. The loss of any of these elements results in a breakdown of the doctor-patient relationship. Clinicians who touch a patient’s body without proper consent “risk violating the trust that forms the foundation of medical practice.”[30] Patients could forsake important medical care if patients cannot trust members of the medical community to abide by their personal notion of dig
Black Boarding Academies as a Prudential Reparation: Finis Origine Pendet
Get PDFWith billions of dollars pledged and trillions of dollars demanded to redress slavery and Jim Crow (“Black Reparations”) the question of how best to use these funds has moved into the forefront of the ongoing campaign for racial justice in our post-civil rights society. Reparatory strategies typically target the norms and structures that sustain racial disadvantage wrought by slavery and Jim Crow. The goal of such transitional reparations is to extinguish the menace of white supremacy and systemic racism across the board. Restructuring in housing, education, employment, voting, law enforcement, health care, and the environment—social transformation—is absolutely needed in the United States if the race problem is ever to be resolved. That much is clear beyond peradventure. The hard question, however, is whether Black Reparations can take us there. Are Black Reparations (or reparations in general) powerful enough to engineer social transformation, or what in this case would be “transitional racial justice”? Unfortunately, I do not believe they can. The American race problem is simply too big for reparations to fix. It would take decades of massive amounts of government spending and the sustained moral commitment of the American people to achieve transitional racial justice in this country. The inflationary impact of the requisite spending (estimated at 59.2 trillion) would give opponents of reparations an easy target. Moreover, transitional reparations have rarely been attempted in other countries and when tried it has never succeeded to my knowledge. South Africa attempted to use reparations for social transformation. While there has been a transformation of political power, giving Black South Africans a strong voice in the government, economic power remains in the hands of White South Africans and racial discrimination in housing and education continues. Although at one time I was among scholars who had hoped Black Reparations could deliver a much-needed Third Reconstruction, I would be remiss as a passionate supporter of Black Reparations for many decades to ignore the cold facts—reparations have never successfully reconstructed a society.
But the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. While Black Reparations may not be sufficient for transitional racial justice, they can still play an important role in moving toward that goal. This Article attempts to show one way of doing so. It argues that the initial payment of Black Reparations should take the shape of an education reparation. Education can, as it has in the past with Brown v. Board of Education, provide a foundation for significant racial progress. The type of education reparation broached in this Article gives African American (or Black American) parents or guardians a unique choice for educating their children—Black Boarding Academies (BBAs). Kick started with public reparations, BBAs would begin with PK-3 low-income Black children, giving special attention to those at risk of falling into the dreadful foster care system, and would expand to accommodate other classes of Black students once financially stable with post-reparations funding. Like most public boarding schools, BBAs will have to be sustained with both public and private funds. Fortunately, there is a wide range of available sources. Historically, boarding schools have a poor reputation in educating children of color, especially Indigenous Americans. The few primary and secondary schools that board Black students have not experienced such problems. Neither have Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) at the postsecondary education level. Following in this rich tradition, BBAs will provide a safe and nurturing environment for Black students. Pedagogically, BBAs will prepare students not just to survive but to thrive. Students will be prepared to assume positions of leadership in our society whether they go directly into the job market or matriculate at HBCUs or predominantly white institutions. One of the most effective instructional models in the country for leadership-oriented teaching can be found in elite New England Prep Schools. They have been doing this for centuries. Using a modified version of their pedagogy—one self-consciously infused with a racial sensibility—BBAs will be able to extend the pipeline to leadership, normally available to upper-income and even middle-income African American students, to low-income African American students. Indeed, the latter are the most vulnerable descendants of the enslaved.
 
Day 1 Lunchtime Speaker: Stephanie McGraw CEO W.A.R.M - We All Really Matter
No full textDay 1 – October 13, 2022 Keynote Lunchtime Speaker: Stephanie McGraw CEO W.A.R.M - We All Really Matte
Plunder and Provenance: Using Restitution to Correct a Market Defect
Get PDFThe secondary art market is experiencing a market failure caused by Nazi-looted art without legal title. Legal and market responses are inadequate and create illiquidity. The prevailing methodology entrenches existing inefficiencies by not utilizing the potential to rehabilitate Nazi-looted art. Economic research does not address Nazi-looted art, and the legal, ethical, and moral discussions are not considering the economic effect of Nazi-looted art on the market. Existing proposals lack a distributive aspect and are inefficient as they remain anchored in the bilateral structure of current possessor versus original owner and a zero-sum framework. This Article closes the existing gap in the literature and recommends compensated restitution as a market solution to the toxic asset of Nazi-looted art. The Article’s central contribution to the restitution debate is the proposed creation of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Restitution Fund (HEAR Fund), which removes Nazi-looted art from the market and increases liquidity through restitution. The HEAR Fund captures and utilizes currently ignored private information, allowing it to contribute to social utility. Uncertainty is eliminated, and the artwork reenters the market with legal title. The Fund has two functions: a database and efficient information infrastructure for provenance research and acquiring works for restitution. It creates an efficient solution to the Nazi-looted art problem by increasing the utility of all art market actors and implements the long-standing executive policy of the United States government on Nazi-looted art bringing justice to the victims of Nazi dispossession. Restitution is structuralized by treating comparable situations equally, adding fairness and justice to the process, and compensation ensures the participation of current possessors
Do Press Publishers Need Additional Copyright Protections? Reading the Copyright Office’s Report on Protections for Press Publishers
Get PDFIn June 2022, the United States Copyright Office published a report on copyright protections for press publishers. The report was the product of a year-long study focused on whether press publishers in the United States need additional statutory protections against online news aggregators. The report concluded that they do not. This essay will discuss the history of the Copyright Office’s report and summarize its findings. Part I describes the origins and method of the study. Part II turns to the report itself, beginning with its historical background on the internet and press publishers, the rise of online news aggregators, and recent legislative efforts to buttress press publishers’ finances through copyright or competition law. Part III covers the Report’s key findings that press publishers already have significant protections under U.S. copyright law, that these protections are subject to some important limitations, but that the most important limitation is not a matter of copyright but bargaining power between press publishers and the largest search and social media platforms. Part IV briefly summarizes the report’s conclusions and recommendations
A Chance at the Arts: Assessment of NYC Department of Education’s ArtsCount as a Violation of Title VI Implementing Regulation
No full textThe City of New York has historically struggled with equitable funding in its public education system. As a result, funding for arts education in New York City public schools has steadily declined. This trend further perpetuates a widespread cultural attitude that undervalues the academic benefits of arts education for students. This lack of support for the arts has particularly impacted schools located in low-income neighborhoods which suffer from low engagement with—and participation in—arts programs and arts instruction. Rocco Landesman, Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, wrote in his study on arts and achievement for at-risk youth that “the only outcomes we should need to measure for a music class is whether the child had the chance to create, enjoy, and understand music.” The New York City Department of Education has attempted to offer all students the chance to participate in arts education through various policy initiatives. In particular, New York City’s Blueprint for the Arts curriculum initiative and its supplemental accountability program, ArtsCount, were implemented to enhance students’ access to arts instruction. The decade following their implementation, however, revealed obvious shortcomings and failures. Moreover, the lack of reform of these initiatives perpetuates the culture of unequal access that is so commonly associated with arts education.
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act states: “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Particularly, Title VI imposes regulations for the implementation of federal funds. Such regulations require that recipients may not “utilize criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, or national origin, or have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program as respect individuals of a particular race, color, or national origin.”
In 2014, the NYC Comptroller released a report describing the failures of ArtsCount, focusing in part on inequities in the distribution of arts instruction across New York City school districts. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between the presence of art instructors, art classrooms, and art programs to socioeconomic status and racial makeup of particular districts. These results are especially problematic as the very purpose of these initiatives is to enhance access to arts education for New York City students. This Note will explore several possible explanations for these failures, including societal and policy-based influences on school leaders in low-income neighborhoods, and how those influences were exacerbated by inefficient systems of reporting such as New York City’s ArtsCount.
Prior to the implementation of BluePrint for the Arts and ArtsCount, New York City provided arts funding through Project ARTS, a grant program that provided schools with dedicated arts funding. This program required that Project ARTS funding was spent in areas related directly to the arts. Transitioning to Blueprint for the Arts and ArtsCount allows the New York City Department of Education to take a passive approach to implementing arts education funding. With ArtsCount, funding that would have previously been dedicated to the arts is now provided to school leaders through general school budgets using ArtsCount as a method to ensure accountability for investing in arts programs. However, the inadequacy of ArtsCount has led to many students in areas of lower socioeconomic status—primarily students of color—having to go without the necessary arts education curriculum as put forth by BluePrint for the Arts, the very curriculum that ArtsCount was meant to ensure.
The inadequacy of this accountability program poses the question of possible Title VI violations. The several years following the Comptroller report have seen little change, despite recommendations for how to mitigate such discriminatory effects. In order to prove a violation of Title VI’s implementing regulations, proof of discriminatory effect will suffice to establish liability and proof of discriminatory intent is not needed. While it could be argued that such a funding structure is necessary and justified, offering less discriminatory alternatives would demonstrate that this structure is still indeed a Title VI violation. This Note explores potential alternatives to the current accountability framework, including reframing how arts education should and may be spent, and rethinking the way that data regarding arts education instruction is collected.
Overall, the goal of this Note is to assess the current status of arts education in New York City Public Schools and how its current funding structure and accountability program impacts the presence of arts education across New York City school districts. This assessment will focus primarily on the New York City public school system, as New York City is a cultural hub of the world with communities of different races, ethnicities, and many socioeconomic backgrounds. Part I of this Note provides background information on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, societal conceptions on the value of arts education, the history of arts education funding in New York City, and the implementation of ArtsCount. Part II of this Note assesses New York City’s current accountability framework in context of Title VI’s implementing regulation, considering the history of race disparities within arts education at the national and local levels. Part III of this Note proposes an alternative which may mitigate such discriminatory implications and increase access to arts education among New York City Public School students. This solution involves a more detailed system of reporting, a mid-level compromise for discretion offered to school leaders over arts funding, and education initiatives offering incentives to increase arts integration in daily common core subject areas. Essentially, this Note articulates the need for reform of the current framework meant to create equal access to arts education for New York City public school students. While focusing on the prevalent racial and socioeconomic disparities that continue under this regime, this Note utilizes the protection offered by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to validate the right to reformation