Contentiousness regarding the impact of certain foreign nations, particularly China and Mexico, on American society and its economy has characterized this year's electoral campaign. The utter absence of factual support for the hateful positions adopted is shocking. To quote Mark Twain, "Get your facts first. Then you can distort them as you please." Here then are the facts.
I have thought long and hard about sharing publicly these views because my role as a professor causes me to want to keep my political views private. My fundamental loyalty to my students and to my graduates makes me want them to know that I respect them and their ideas, including their political ideas which may differ from my own. Because my right to my political views should not interfere with my professional obligations to my students, and because my expertise as an educator does not give me special expertise or authority on political matters, I work very hard to keep my views private, outside the classroom or the university where I work.
However, the heightened distortion of the facts in this campaign, and the grave consequences I foresee from the exacerbation of bigotry that it is inducing, make things different this time. While I will continue to keep my political views outside the classroom or the University, and will continue to extend all of my students, whatever their views, my respect and dedication as their professor, I need to share these thoughts publicly in writing in my blog. I make explicit that these are personal views, those of an individual citizen, and that they do not represent the institution where I work in any way. As an American by choice I elected to swear allegiance to the United States. I studied the history and the Constitution of this nation and I made the choice to actively contribute, as citizens do in a democratic society, to make this society better and true to the principles on which this country was founded. I am deeply concerned that the extreme chauvinism and bigotry that has become the new normal to serve short-term political gains is unfortunate and gravely damaging for three reasons.
First, because the claim that China and Mexico have somehow taken advantage of the American people is untrue, and this falsehood prevents the American public from focusing attention where we should: in the economic, education and social policies we pursue. The living conditions and opportunities that the people in China, Mexico, the United States or any other nation experience are fundamentally the result of the actions taken by the economic and political leaders of those nations in creating opportunities, as well as the result of decisions made by individuals in response to those opportunities.
When China's Premier Den Xiaoping led a series of reforms known as the four modernizations starting in 1978 he unleashed the creation of many opportunities that improved the living conditions for the people of China. The policies Chinese leaders have advanced since, in particular the policies to expand access to and improve the quality of education, have produced the largest change in the level of education of a nation the world has witnessed in a single generation. It is no wonder that policies like these have produced the most dramatic reduction in the level of poverty experienced by people in history. Chinese leaders did not achieve these gains taking anything from anyone, but making smart policy choices, creating opportunities and reinforcing cultural practices that encouraged individuals to work hard in response to those opportunities. In my visits to schools and universities in China, I see students who are dedicated to their studies, who spend time cultivating their talent, and take full advantage of the many opportunities that equally dedicated teachers and supportive parents create for them.
Progress in Mexico is also the result of smart policy choices by that nation's leaders. When the Mexican Congress passed legislation, a decade ago, providing free and mandatory early childhood education programs for all children, at great cost and sacrifice to that nation, it made a smart choice reflecting the willingness of an entire nation to provide for their children opportunities they themselves had not had. Similarly, the education policies and programs advanced by the Federal Government in Mexico to raise the standards of entry into the teaching profession, and to invest in the professional development of their teachers, are increasing the quality of the education, providing the current generation of students opportunities their parents did not have.
That two nations with significantly lower income per capita than the United States should choose to make these kind of investments in the education of their children, and of their most disadvantaged populations, should be a reason for admiration, and an opportunity for us to learn, not a cause for disparagement, for the same reasons we should hope other nations could learn from and admire American policies which produced progress in our nation.
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Adjustment Act in 1944, providing benefits to returning World War II veterans, he stimulated a dramatic expansion in the opportunity to attend college. This expanded access in time produced a significant increase in the number of college graduates in the United States. This simple act caused the United States to remain, for the next four decades, the nation with the highest percentage of high school graduates who attended college. This policy, and others that supported expansion to college access, were the backbone of the remarkable economic development the United States enjoyed for many decades.
The economic challenges experienced by part of the American population in recent decades are not the result of what other nations have done, but of what we have failed to do in response to the transformation of the ways in which goods and services are produced. What is key to address the misfortunes of those who rightly fear for their lack of economic opportunity is what we do, not what others do. We should anticipate a world where artificial intelligence will increasingly do work that people used to do, and a world where advanced skills are essential to participate economically and civically. We should also anticipate a world where other nations have a more educated population than we do, the current trends in educational attainment and achievement suggest we are already there. There is much we could learn from other countries in how they are transforming their education systems to expand the opportunities for their population, and keeping communications and collaboration with those nations, rather than building walls or blaming them for our problems, are the smart responses that we should demand of our leaders.
The second reason the bigotry and chauvinism which characterize this campaign is unfortunate is because it moves part of the electorate in the opposite direction of what is necessary to advance progress and opportunity in the world. As a result of the revolution caused by telecommunication technologies in the last three decades the world has become smaller. We now all have many opportunities to collaborate with fellow human beings across the earth in multiple ways. These include creating businesses, creating arts, advancing scientific knowledge, promoting human rights, finding ways to address shared challenges, such as the damage humans are causing to the earth's ecosystem. The potential of those expanding forms of collaboration now possible is unlimited. Judging from what those collaborations have already produced, in the advancement of basic scientific knowledge, in the development of technologies, in addressing shared challenges like terrorism or other forms of criminal activity, in improving the state of the planet, we have every reason to believe that this century could be one of unprecedented human progress in helping us substantially improve the conditions of life for all people on this planet, and for the rest of living creatures and the planet itself. We can create a world of abundance in opportunity in collaboration with others, but not with a mindset that the opportunities available are fixed.
The ideology that retreating from these opportunities of global collaboration will help advance the interests of a particular nation or tribe, advanced for example by the leaders of misguided groups such as ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda before them, is factually incorrect and dangerous to those who will be deprived of the benefits of the progress that global collaboration yields. The sorry state of life for those in the small areas which have fallen temporarily under the control of those chauvinistic and bigoted groups prove how much more limiting of human well-being life and opportunity those ideologies are.
The bigoted ideology that is undermining the support for collaboration with people from other nations is also creating large holes in the fabric of American society, as it is undermining the trust among different ethnic or cultural groups. An American born student in one of the schools in the town where I live, whose father is a naturalized American of Mexican origin, has been harassed by some of his peers who have indicated that they hope one of the candidates wins, so we build a wall and he has to 'go back to his country'. Those who bully him ignore the fact that, by law, America is this child's country, as well as his parents'. The prevalence of incidents like this across schools, neighborhoods and towns in America is deeply concerning. While it is easy to see how the tenor of this campaign is inciting such hateful bigotry, it is harder to predict how these forces of hate will be reigned in, once unleashed.
The third reason this bigoted rhetoric is regrettable is because it may fuel stereotypes about America in the rest of the world which are untrue, harmful to this country, and harmful to the fundamental principles on which this experiment in self-rule stands. Those who have limited exposure to life in the United States and who take seriously the claims of the candidate who espouses these bigoted views, or who believe that his supporters endorse him for those views, might conclude that this is a nation of people who condone that members of a particular ethnicity should have superior legal rights to others, that this is a nation that discriminates on the basis of religion, and that we endorse the abuse of women or individuals with disabilities. Some might perhaps even take seriously the irresponsible claims made by this candidate that the President of the United States conspired to create a criminal organization like ISIS or that the government is conspiring to not count the votes in the election as casted by the voters. Others, recognizing the absurdity of these claims, but realizing the reality that the candidate in question was elected by a majority of the voters of one of the two leading political parties in the United States, and anticipating that he has a serious chance at becoming the next President of the nation, might conclude that American democracy is a joke, a dysfunctional aberration in government at best, or largely the privilege of a racist society.
It would be absurd, of course, to think that a candidate who advocates bigotry speaks for the United States, even if he were elected. The United States is a big and diverse country, a country with a great history as a remarkable experiment of self-rule, a country with strong institutions and with the benefits of checks and balances that make American democracy work. It is a country where we honor the freedom of people to speak their mind, even when what they say makes little sense. Hopefully the voters will in time show that we don't endorse candidates who incite hatred, who have no respect for the facts, and who challenge the very institutions that allow this nation to be a nation of laws.
Amidst this diversity, the people of the United States want peace, with each other and with people from other nations around the world. In that we are more alike than different to the people in China and in Mexico, nations where I have worked with colleagues in the field of education for many years. These too are large and diverse countries, with strong institutions, with their challenges, but above all with people who want to live in peace, with each other and with people from other nations of the world.
Demonizing other nations, as one of our Presidential candidates has done recurrently over the last year, has nothing to do with the principles and ideals of American democracy. In fact this country was founded to a large extent because of the solidarity of another nation, France, who supported the audacity of a group of rebels who risked their lives to build a society where individuals could rule themselves and all could be fundamentally equal. I see many of the views this candidate has espoused as un-American, and see his election by the majority of the member of the party of Abraham Lincoln as a disgrace, that I hope the members of that party, which includes many honorable and committed people, will recognize and correct. My loyalty to these United States, my adopted country, causes me to share these views publicly in hope they will cause others to see how damaging the claims I have discussed are, even if sharing these thoughts means violating a long-held belief and practice that sharing my politics is not in my best interest as a professor or in the best interest of my students.
This time things are different because the hateful discourse of this candidate is causing much harm to this country I love so much and to its most fundamental institutions. His hateful narrative against China and Mexico is unfounded, untrue, misguided and harmful to the American people and to the prospects for collaboration across borders that are so essential to advance global well being and to sustain peace.
In my experience of many years working with colleagues around the world all the people in China and in Mexico want is peace, as do we. For this they need progress, as do we. On these shared interests in peace and progress I hope we will keep an unwavering commitment to the facts and to the truth as we approach the next American presidential election in November, with a focus on the smart choices we need to make to improve people's well-being, now and in the future.