Civics Awareness

Can we still find a path to civil discourse?

lblouin — Mon, 20 May 2024 14:01:40 +0000

Can we still find a path to civil discourse? lblouin Mon, 05/20/2024 - 10:01

In his younger days, ��-Dearborn Chancellor Domenico Grasso wasn’t much of a reader, aside from his assigned school readings, like “Lord of the Flies,” “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Julius Caesar.” It’s something he chalks up to a number of factors. His Italian immigrant parents, who didn’t read English, didn’t encourage reading at home. As a teenager, he devoted much of his free time to sports. And his main academic interests were math and science, not disciplines, like literature, that didn’t give the indisputable answers he was interested in. That started to change when Grasso met his now-wife of 35 years. Susan, a fellow engineer who started college in the Honors program in U-M’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts, was the opposite — an adventurous and enthusiastic reader who consumed everything from novels to nonfiction, science to literature. When they started dating, he tried to explain that he simply didn’t have the attention span for reading. But she didn’t buy it. “Then why don’t you just read one or two pages and put the book down?” she said. Such a straightforward and simple solution hadn’t occurred to him. He remembers starting with Sinclair Lewis, a novelist and playwright who wrote prescient social commentaries on topics as diverse as the banality of middle class life and the dangers of American fascism. One or two pages at a time, Grasso made his way through Lewis’ “Main Street,” then “Babbitt,” then book after book. The habit stuck.

Now, Grasso says his enthusiasm for reading matches Susan’s. And he’s equally adventurous. Though he’s an environmental engineer by training, his reading preferences bend toward literature, the social sciences and philosophy — interests you see reflected in his selections for the Chancellor’s Book Club, a campus group he started several years ago. His inaugural pick, “Klara and the Sun,” a dystopian novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a commentary on the nature of love that focuses on the life of an artificial being. “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamín Labatut is a novel based on real-life scientists that explores the links between discovery and humanity’s penchant for destruction. Annie Ernaux’s “A Man’s Place” probes the familial tensions that arise from transcending social class. Grasso’s latest selection, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been influential in helping us understand important fractures now plaguing society.

Grasso says his motivation for starting the club was straightforward. “To be honest, there are a lot of book clubs out there and I didn’t want to participate in a book club,” he explains. “I just made an offer: If anyone wants to read the same book I’m reading, we can have a discussion.” Grasso hopes the club offers a window into the ideas and perspectives that inform his approach as chancellor. And he believes reading and discussing a really interesting book can, in fact, be entertaining. But the book club is also a gesture toward one of his core values: That we need to have spaces on campus, and in our lives, for discussing provocative, consequential issues and ideas in a thoughtful, open-minded way.

It may sound simple, but the idea that civil dialogue can exist is something that many have, frankly, given up on. Say it out loud, and it sounds a little old school. Some might find it Pollyannaish. Polarization, particularly in the political sphere, along with an accompanying hardening of belief systems, has led many to judge that it’s no longer worth trying to have conversations with colleagues, friends, relatives and neighbors who have different views. Grasso, for one, still thinks such a thing is possible. Or more specifically, he doesn’t have a lot of optimism for a society that completely loses that skill. “I think it is our only hope,” Grasso says. “What I believe isn’t too far from what Thomas Jefferson said about the prerequisite for democracy being an informed electorate. I think you can make the same argument that if you want an inclusive, nurturing, welcoming environment for all the people who live in our society, you need a well-educated group of people who can think through the challenges we have. And we’re losing the ability to have these kinds of conversations.”

Grasso is happy to see that kind of thoughtful dialogue happening within the book club and its sister group, the Chancellor's Video Club, where participants watch and then discuss big idea YouTube videos. (The first was the classic 1965 James Baldwin-William F. Buckley debate and the latest was a panel discussion of Francis Fukuyama’s “Liberalism and Its Discontents.”) Perhaps it’s not surprising things are going well. The clubs’ most active participants tend to be faculty members who are well-practiced in debating ideas and coexisting with colleagues who have different opinions. But as he looks across the university, he thinks we are missing out on some opportunities to nurture the open-mindedness, humility and broad curiosity that he thinks are necessary ingredients for civil discourse and thoughtful problem solving. He points to his own discipline, engineering, as an area where he thinks a narrow mindset is undercutting engineering’s broader potential. “We talk about engineering like it’s only an extension of math and science, and unfortunately, I see so many engineering students, like my younger self, who see the humanities, and English and reading as fluff,” he says. “I even remember a celebratory reception for a colleague who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, where he proudly declared that he had never read a novel! But engineering is rarely simply math and science. It’s taking math and science and applying it to human problems. Robert Pirsig, who wrote ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ observed that technology ends up doing such ugly things because it’s disconnected in any real sense from humanity. Engineers often create things because they can, but without thought as to how their creativity is going to be absorbed and adapted by humanity. And that’s because many engineers are detached from the essence of the human condition.”

Grasso also thinks that, despite the right intentions, we lost the plot when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “There is no question that whoever is on campus, we want them to represent the whole of human potential,” Grasso says. “But I think we reached a stage with DEI where it started to take on a life independent of what its original objectives were. It was a means that became an end. And we don't have as much to show for it as may have been possible. I do feel like we went down some wrong paths in DEI planning, and I want to go back on the trail a little bit and look for the flashes on the trees and get back on the right trail.” Grasso’s idea for that centers around a new Office of Holistic Excellence, which was recently featured in an article in Learning Well magazine. He concedes it’s an “ambiguous” name — something he says is intentional so the office can become an umbrella for a broad group of initiatives. Specifically, Grasso wants the office to support a more encompassing sense of diversity and inclusivity, which emphasizes a diversity of perspectives and disciplines, in addition to demographic diversity. His thinking is that the capacity for open-minded, thoughtful, cool-headed dialogue — the thing he feels is required to solve a diverse society’s biggest challenges — can be best nurtured by an environment in which members of our campus community encounter views that aren’t their own as a regular part of their lives here. Necessarily, this also means that the university must continue its efforts to ensure that education is accessible and its population is demographically diverse, two of the main goals of prior DEI initiatives. He just doesn't want the effort to be limited to the scope of the traditional DEI playbook.

Grasso isn’t pretending to have all the answers. In fact, his whole point is that he doesn’t — nor does anyone. He believes the best solutions, including in a complex and polarizing area like diversity and inclusion, will require everyone’s involvement. But he feels like, as chancellor, he can help set the tone. “At the end of the day, what I’d like is a community that’s more like the academy of ancient Greece,” he says. “Not that we’re walking around in togas, but that we’re asking important, relevant and deep questions. It’s better to be curious than confident. And I fear that our society is filled with an overabundance of confidence and a scant amount of curiosity. I’d like our campus to be the antidote to that. I’d like it to be a place where people are super curious, and they want to know about other cultures, other disciplines and other ways of thinking about important topics, so we can develop a clearer view for a collectively desirable future.”

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If you’re looking for something to add to your summer reading list, the next Chancellor’s Book Club selection is “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt. The New York Times noted that Haidt’s 2012 book “wants to start a conversation about integrating a better understanding of human nature — our sentiments, sociality and morality — into the ways we debate and govern ourselves.” A discussion will be hosted in the fall. Story by Lou Blouin

Civics Awareness

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Mon, 05/20/2024 - 14:01

In an era where strong opinions dominate and people are increasingly unwilling to entertain alternative perspectives, Chancellor Domenico Grasso is going old school in his effort to rebuild the foundation for debating big issues.

Credit: Michigan Photography

This professor is preparing for a busy election season of political deepfake detection

lblouin — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 16:36:13 +0000

This professor is preparing for a busy election season of political deepfake detection lblouin Wed, 02/07/2024 - 11:36

In the days leading up to last month’s New Hampshire primary election, hundreds of voters received a prerecorded phone call featuring the voice of President Joe Biden. Such robocalls are a common part of campaigns nowadays, but the theme of this one was a little unusual. In the recording, Biden urged Democratic voters not to show up at the polls, arguing that their primary votes would enable “the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday.” The garbled logic of the message was the first tip-off that this might not actually be Biden’s voice. The next day, ��-Dearborn Professor Hafiz Malik got an email from an Associated Press reporter who sent him the robocall for analysis. Malik ran it through the latest version of a system he uses to detect deepfakes — sophisticated, typically AI-generated clones of someone’s voice that sound completely authentic. Indeed, though the voice on the recording sounded just like Biden’s, it showed all the hallmarks of an AI-generated fake.

Malik, who’s been working with deepfakes since 2015, estimates he received about a hundred such requests for analysis last year, mostly from journalists. In some ways, he’s not surprised: He forecasted that such faked audio and video, particularly of public figures and decision makers, would become a problem long before most people knew what a deepfake was. But in some ways, he says his doom-and-gloom predictions still fell short. “One thing I didn’t anticipate was the commercial scale of both deepfake generation and deepfake detection that exists today,” Malik explains. “There are basically many off-the-shelf options, both free and commercial, for generating deepfakes, which means you don’t have to be an expert anymore to do this stuff. Basically anyone can do it.”

The result is that deepfakes have exploded across the internet, particularly in the past year. Some are harmless — and amazing — like the videos on the @DeepTomCruise TikTok account, which feature a spookily authentic-looking, youngish, Tom Cruise doing weird but ordinary things, like dancing in a bathrobe or washing his hands. More often, though, the intent is malicious. Aside from political disinformation, deepfake porn and financial scams are some of the biggest emerging threats. One recent study estimated the number of nonconsensual deepfake porn videos grew by more than 50% in the first nine months of 2023 compared to 2022. And financial attacks are targeting everyone from ordinary people to company CEOs. Last year, for example, in the biggest attack of its kind, cloned audio of a company director’s voice was used to dupe an employee into wiring $35 million into a scammer’s account.

Malik says both the private and public sectors are scrambling to deal with this new reality. Several states have passed legislation banning or limiting the use of deepfakes, though federal laws are still lacking. Major social media platforms, including Facebook and TikTok, have also banned deepfakes of political figures that are intended to mislead people, though they do allow other kinds of generated video and audio and there are still dozens of platforms where deepfakes run wild. Malik says there’s also been a movement within the community of software developers that make deepfake generators to embed media created with their products with traceable artifacts, so fakes can be easily identified. “But that might only solve 60% or 70% of the problem,” Malik says. “There are going to be more sophisticated attackers out there creating deepfakes using their own processes that would be undetectable.”

He also says off-the-shelf options for deepfake detection are still fairly unsophisticated. “I had a reporter from the New York Times ask me, basically, ‘Why do I need an expert like you if I can just download detection software?’ I said, ‘Yeah, you can do that.’ But there are ways to bypass commercial detectors,” Malik explains. “For instance, if you tweak the deepfake recording just a little bit, the commercial detectors are expected to fail. And the reporter emailed me back 30 minutes later and told me — lo and behold — he was able to fool it.”

Malik has become a go-to resource for deepfake detection largely because he relies on a completely original process that his team has created in his ��-Dearborn lab. They start by creating models of public figures based on hundreds of hours of audio recordings that are known to be authentic. Using machine learning processes, the models extract hundreds of qualities that are inherent to that person’s vocal presentation. Importantly, this modeling focuses on the sound of the person’s voice, including qualities that are imperceptible to our ears. But it also identifies things that aren’t verbal, like a speaker’s word-per-minute rate, the length of the space between their words or the particular quality of the breathy inhales between sentences. This creates a sort of fingerprint for each person. After they’ve performed a similar modeling of a suspected deepfake recording, they then compare it to the authentic model for similarities and differences. Interestingly, like a radiologist reading an X-ray, Malik still does the comparative analysis himself — he doesn't use artificial intelligence. There’s a very good reason for that. “If I’m saying to a journalist, ‘this is real’ or ‘this is fake,’ I have to be able to show them why I think it’s real or fake,” Malik says. “My judgment has to be trustworthy.” If Malik used AI for his analysis, he actually wouldn’t have an explanation for how his system made a particular judgment due to a quirky feature of machine learning known as the “black box problem.” Machine learning algorithms can do some amazing things, but explaining how they come to their conclusions is still beyond their powers.

Malik is, however, hoping to streamline his process for the upcoming election. He expects 2024 will be his busiest year yet for deepfake analysis and will soon be launching a website to make it easier for journalists to submit suspicious audio to his lab for analysis. (Since most videos feature audio, he can also use this method to analyze video deepfakes.) In addition, he’s training several of his graduate student assistants to do the analysis that right now he alone does. “I think we are basically viewing this as an important public service that our lab is in a unique position to provide,” Malik says. “Our goal is to help the public make informed decisions, help democracy,” he says. “We don’t align with the Democratic Party or Republican Party, and we have models of all the major candidates on both sides. We align with our own fundamentals of democracy, which are rooted in people having a good sense of what is true and what is not true.”

Interestingly, Malik expects this election will be the most vulnerable to deepfakes, but after that, he forecasts things could get better. For starters, he thinks governments across the world will respond with more regulations in the coming years. And he sees the technology quickly maturing into a “steady state” dynamic that most cybersecurity challenges eventually evolve into. Right now, Malik says the generation technology is ahead of the detection technology. But as detection capabilities catch up, we’ll settle into a subtler arms race, where deepfakers are finding new, smaller ways to fool the detectors, and the detectors respond quickly with new defenses. “So I would hope that in 2028, or even 2026, we’re talking a lot less about our elections being vulnerable to deepfakes,” Malik says. “But, who knows? My predictions have been off before.”

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If you’re a journalist looking for deepfake analysis, you can reach out to Professor Hafiz Malik at hafiz@umich.edu. Story by Lou Blouin

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Electrical and Computer Engineering

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Wed, 02/07/2024 - 16:28

��-Dearborn Professor Hafiz Malik has become a go-to resource for journalists debunking fake audio and video.

Professor Hafiz Malik explains how Alexa and similar smart speakers are vulnerable to attacks, including voice cloning, one of many topics he and his students study in his busy ��-Dearborn lab. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

Should the price of gas fuel presidential performance ratings?

tinahu — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 17:02:01 +0000

Should the price of gas fuel presidential performance ratings? tinahu Wed, 03/09/2022 - 12:02

Gas prices are rising. No inflation relief is in sight. The pandemic is now in its third year. And there’s an international war. All while the U.S. political system continues to be politically polarized.

It’s a tough time to be a world leader. And the current U.S. presidential approval ratings like Gallup and Marist Poll — which act as a barometer into the political health of the president — echo this. Among post-World War II presidents elected to their first term,nearly all first-year presidents averaged 57% or better. But President Joe Biden’s recent Gallup low of 41% puts him near the bottom.

But is a failing grade deserved?

Associate Professor Julio Borquez

Political Science Associate Professor Julio Borquez, whose polling research spans 40 years, says it depends on who’s asked. His expert take? Biden got caught at the crossroads of unfortunate circumstances and unrealistic expectations.

“Biden’s approval ratings are following a pattern similar to what we’ve seen in recent presidencies. He began with a decent (Gallup) approval rating of 57%, and it has dropped in the year or so since down to its current 41%. The decline began last summer, and it can probably be pegged to inflation, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the emergence of Omicron and a stalled legislative agenda.” Of course there’s also the “record high” gas prices — but, to be fair to Biden, gas prices were 32% higher in 2008 under President George W. Bush if inflation is taken into account.

Talking with Borquez recently, he examined how political polarization impacts the presidential approval rating, what a low approval percentage could mean at the midterm elections, and if there is anything Biden can do to appeal to the American public.

There’s been a bump in recent numbers (48% on March 4) according to the Marist Poll. What are your thoughts on this?

Julio Borquez: “JFK got a spike in his approval rating around the time of the Cuban missile crisis. (Jimmy) Carter got one when hostages were first taken in Iran. George W. Bush’s ratings rallied to 90% after 9/11. Approval ratings can increase, sometimes dramatically, immediately after foreign policy crises.

It may be from the State of the Union, but it’s more likely that Joe Biden is getting a bump from the public giving him the benefit of the doubt on how he’s handling the conflict in Ukraine. It’s a small bump — I wouldn’t call it a rally. We’ll see what the future brings because approval ratings often suffer as wars continue and casualties mount.”

Do these approval numbers matter?

“Lots of people take it seriously as a barometer. That includes members of Congress, journalists and lobbyists. The real danger in Biden's current approval rating is for his party's candidates in the midterm election. Congressional incumbents today can’t separate themselves from national political currents as they once could. And anemic approval ratings like Biden’s are certainly an unwelcome current for Democratic congressional incumbents.

In general, an approval rating over 50% is considered good and approval ratings below 50% are considered to be concerning. In 2018, Donald Trump's approval rating in the Gallup poll before the midterm election was in the low 40s. Republicans lost 40 House seats and the majority. In 2010, Barack Obama's approval rating had dipped to 45%. Democrats lost 63 seats and the majority. In 1994, Bill Clinton's approval rating was 46%. Democrats lost 53 seats and the majority. You get the picture. George W. Bush’s approval ratings were over 60% throughout the fall of 2002, and the Republicans gained two Senate seats and eight House seats.

Biden’s approval rating of 41% might not have his staff hitting the panic button, but they’ve probably double-checked on where the button is.”

Is it fair to be so critical of Joe Biden?

“In Biden’s case, he encouraged high expectations. He was optimistic about reigning in the pandemic, he advanced an ambitious policy agenda on infrastructure, climate, jobs, election reform and voting rights. Many Americans perhaps do expect too much from presidents — but Biden asked us to expect a lot.”

He’s getting blamed for rising gas prices. Is that warranted?

“I’ve recently returned from California and have seen our future when it comes to gas prices — $5.59 a gallon in Oakland. That’s not going to go over well for Biden. But the price of gas is not something a president can control or quickly fix outside of reducing or suspending the federal tax on it — that will only have a limited effect (taxes on gasoline and diesel are 18.4 and 24.4 cents per gallon respectively). I get why people are upset — it’s something we are seeing on Main Street and it’s impacting our lives. But we need to understand that Biden cannot control all of the external factors behind the record high oil prices, he can only react to them.

Joe Biden has done good things. The infrastructure bill that he signed into law back in November comes to mind. But tangible results of that bill will be slow to roll out — specific spending decisions are yet to be made and the projects themselves will play out over months, if not years. It’s no accident that when Biden made a recent trip to Ohio, one of his tasks was to remind voters about the infrastructure bill.”

Is there more at play here than Biden setting high expectations?

“Going back to the 2020 elections, it was evident that a lot of Biden voters weren’t wildly enthusiastic about him and they voted for Biden because he wasn’t Donald Trump. The erosion of support for Biden we’re seeing now among Democrats and Independents might be among those citizens who were motivated more by dislike of Trump than by admiration of Biden.

In recent years, as American politics has become more polarized, many analysts now see presidential approval as primarily a measure of partisanship. Obama’s approval ratings didn’t change much with fluctuations in the economy. That’s because Democrats supported, and Republicans opposed him regardless. We saw the same thing with Trump’s approval ratings, except with the partisan patterns reversed.

Biden’s current Gallup overall approval rating is 41%. But if you look down party lines, it shows the division that exists — approval ratings among Republicans have never topped 12%, and they’ve been in single digits since last August. Biden’s current approval rating among Democrats is 78% and it’s 7% among Republicans. Partisan polarization creates both a floor and a ceiling for Biden’s approval ratings. Persistent Republican opposition sets the ceiling, ongoing Democratic support provides the floor. This appears to be an important new feature in presidential approval ratings. Partisan polarization sets limits to how much approval ratings can rise or fall.

A president’s ‘power to persuade’ depends, in part, on his ability to get members of Congress to think that it’s in their best interest to support the president’s agenda. A president with a robust approval rating — say, over 50% — can more easily make that case. Biden’s 41% rating isn’t much of an asset. Realistically, there’s not much he can do to drastically change it because of the partisan patterns that exist.”

If our leaders are relatively ineffective because of political polarization, what can we do?

“Use your vote to demand that both parties take a responsible role in government. Currently, in Congress, Republicans are sitting on the sideline and their strategy is rock-solid opposition to most Biden-backed proposals that are brought forward. They don’t want to advance anything — so they do nothing. And Democrats are trying to grapple with disagreements among themselves because they need to maintain near unanimous Democrat support to get anything moving.

I do understand that the Build Back Better bill was massive and the size of it gave some Democrats and most Republicans an easy rationale to say no. Perhaps Congress could have done a piece-by-piece strategy and voted on it that way. The issue is that no one wants to give any appearance of a win to the other party. That’s become more important than working together to best represent the American public.

We need to put pressure on both parties to step up to the plate. At this time, only one party is really trying to do that. We need to use our votes to back politicians who will take policymaking seriously and who will work for the people and not just their party.”

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

Civics Awareness

Faculty Research

��-Dearborn Experts

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

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Wed, 03/09/2022 - 17:02

https://app.e2ma.net/app2/audience/signup/1713510/33277/?v=a

Political Science Associate Professor Julio Borquez says many factors go into a president’s approval rating and breaks down the factors behind Biden's current polling numbers. He also shares what we, as voters, can do to foster a future where polarization doesn't get in the way of progress.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

Life behind and beyond the prison wall

tinahu — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:15:18 +0000

Life behind and beyond the prison wall tinahu Wed, 02/16/2022 - 10:15

Students in a ��-Dearborn course are putting on an exhibit that features a variety of artistic expressions in an effort to foster dialogue about social institutions. They’re creating a publicity plan for a concert that gives inspirational messages to young people. And they are organizing a springtime BBQ picnic that will connect law enforcement and community.

And it’s all in the name of helping people see humanity in one another — especially when it comes to people who are, or have been, incarcerated.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange course is a class of 20 students led by Sociology Professor Paul Draus and History Associate Professor Anna Müller. The class meets weekly to discuss a variety of topics that includes the origins of imprisonment and the construction of social order and has students reflect on the effects that incarceration has on society outside of the prison walls.

To do this in a real way, students are connected with people on “the inside” to hear about their experiences — both before and during their time in prison. Previously, the class went to the Macomb County Corrections Facility to have guided interactions with the convicted men. But due to COVID reasons, the class needed to change formats.

Professor Paul Draus

“When the option of going into the correctional facility was no longer available due to the pandemic in early 2020. Then the protests over the George Floyd murder began happening. I thought that we need this program more than ever to have important conversations. It needed to continue,” Draus said.

To create space to hear some of their voices, students are reading articles from the Hamilton American Prison Writing Archive, they are speaking with adults who have transitioned from prison to civilian life, and they are completing class projects like putting on exhibits, concerts and conversation-based meals. First, in the early days of the pandemic, the project-based learning course met via Zoom. But now, the students come together on campus.

“We had to pivot because of the pandemic, but it has really worked,” Müller said. “The class attracts students with a variety of interests, not just criminal justice. It works because we’ve kept the focus on what we can do to create change in a real way.”

Associate Professor Anna Müller

For example, each student will work on a community-centered project that will be completed by the end of the term in April. There are four that the class is working on:

• Helping the Macomb Theory Group — a group of men at the Macomb County Correctional Facility channeling thought and emotion into creativity — plan an exhibit of their art at Oloman Café in Hamtramck. There are many talented artists in the group — like Steve Hibbler, whose work has been published in Harper’s Magazine (October 2019).

• Promoting a concert for the Chamber Music Society of Detroit that’s devoted to juvenile lifers without parole.

• Bringing awareness to mass incarceration on ��-Dearborn’s campus by juxtaposing the public face of mass incarceration with the voices of the incarcerated via a website, podcast, blog or performance.

• Planning a springtime picnic with community members and public safety officers with the goal of fostering conversation and camaraderie.

��-Dearborn senior Penny Kane isn’t enrolled in the course, but comes weekly to assist with a project — she’s helping with the art exhibit — and to share her experiences as someone who served time at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, where there is an Inside-Out Program run through Eastern Michigan University. During the progression of the class, Kane noticed how the students’ demeanor toward her changed. She said during the first week students were paralyzed by fear to interact with her. By the last week, the students were smiling, laughing and joking.

“A class like this really makes a difference because it helps you see what an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated person looks like. I think it’s surprising to some people to see that I’m a daughter, writer, student and friend. Yes, I’m also a felon. I'm very open about that. But prison gives you time to think and reflect about what you’ve done and the changes you want to make.”

There are approximately 2.1 million incarcerated people in the U.S. prison system. And each year, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons. Kane said with these high numbers, there are many free people still imprisoned by the social stigma of “formerly incarcerated.” And she hopes that class like this one creates a bridge for understanding.

“If the time has been served and the person is seen as being rehabilitated to the point that they are walking freely on the streets, why aren’t we allowing them to do more than get a poverty-level job or live off the government, which may put them back in a similar position as before? If someone has the drive to make changes in their life, they should be given the chance,” she said, noting that poverty is the No. 1 predictor for recidivism. “I hope conversations like the ones that happen in this class can help take away some of the fear people have and remove the social stigma that exists.”

To help make real connections to open doors for open conversation, the class has a written dialogue with the Macomb County Correctional Facility Theory Group. For example, the men in the Theory Group wrote poems to introduce themselves to the class. In response, students wrote similar introductory works and sent them to the prison. Read some of the student and Theory Group "Who I Am" poems.

Having attended several of campus’ Inside Out sessions, Kane said Draus and Müller are skilled at listening to class conversations and extracting the teachable moments. For example, when talking about labels, Draus and Müller asked the class: “What should we call people who are in prison or who were formerly in prison?”

Students looked around the room at each other. After a pause, a few waged a guess: “convicted felon,” “prisoner,” “inmate.”

Then Bryan Jones — an accomplished musician who works for Chamber Music Society of Detroit — spoke up, “Whatever you do, please don’t see them as just a number. They have names. They are people.”

Jones would know. For a crime he committed as a teen, Jones served 31 years in prison. Now out, he’s earned his college degree, landed a full time job, frequently volunteers for nonprofits and recently bought a home. But it wasn’t easy — that robbery from the 1980s followed him even after his release because of the criminal history questions on job applications, rental agreements and college applications.

“I was lucky that I had a love for music. Music helped people view me as a real person. When I was in prison, I ended up connecting to employees there because I could play the piano and I liked composing. I became associated with that and they began to realize that I’m more than a number,” he said. Jones said if it wasn’t for music opening doors to connect him with prison officials, re-citizenship would have been exponentially more difficult. He said some of the prison staff helped him get re-established after he was paroled, like a corrections officer who later became his landlord. Jones often comes to campus’ Inside Out class to share his story and serve as a mentor.

Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies senior Senita Wilks sat across the table from Jones. Wilks said she took the class to get a deeper insight into the conditions inside of a prison, hear personal experiences from people who have experienced living in one, and learn what she can do to help people stay out of one.

Wilks, who formerly worked as a prison corrections officer, plans to attend law school after her Spring 2022 graduation. She wants to be a defense attorney who takes pro bono cases.

“I know a few people who have been convicted or went through the system in some sense. They couldn’t pay to retain their own attorney, and that could have made the difference in their outcome,” said Wilks, noting that court-appointed counsel is often overworked and underpaid. “It’s important that our justice system realizes that these are real people with real lives. They deserve due process and they deserve to have people recognize that change is possible.”

And that’s the overall goal of the Inside-Out Program — showing that change is possible on both sides of the prison wall.

Article by Sarah Tuxbury.

Civics Awareness

Coronavirus

Experiential Learning

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

Social Sciences

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Wed, 02/16/2022 - 15:15

For 15 years, the Inside-Out Prison Exchange program has encouraged ��-Dearborn students to think about crime and punishment mechanisms in human terms.

Bryan Jones, second from left, speaks with Associate Professor Anna Müller during campus' Inside-Out Prison Program. Photo by Sarah Tuxbury

The challenges of teaching students civics in an era of political incivility

lblouin — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 13:17:33 +0000

The challenges of teaching students civics in an era of political incivility lblouin Mon, 07/05/2021 - 09:17

A collage graphic featuring a social studies teacher expressively teaching to a high school class with red, white and blue themed graphics in the background

In an era where divisions between those on the left and right seem increasingly irreconcilable, civics education could be a rare opportunity for common ground. In a recent survey, K-12 civics education was ranked by an identical percentage of Democrats and Republicans as something that would have the “most positive and meaningful impact on strengthening the American identity.” Not only that, but likely voters in the survey identified teachers as the most trusted source for helping young people learn the skills needed for maintaining democracy.

A headshot of Ed.D. student Karen Caldwell

For the optimistic among us, such attitudes may offer a glimmer of hope for charting a future in which Americans can once again discuss and debate issues without overheating. But ��-Dearborn Ed.D. student Karen Caldwell says the seeming consensus that civics education is important doesn’t equate to agreement about what should be taught in the classroom. As part of her dissertation research, Caldwell, a former social studies teacher who now serves as an education coach for low-performing schools in Wayne County, is digging into all kinds of challenges teachers face in effectively teaching civics. Without question, they are many. Outside of any politics, one of the fundamental hurdles teachers face is the number of hours devoted to civics in the typical school calendar, says Caldwell. In Michigan, for example, civics in elementary school consists of eight to nine weeks of 4th-grade instruction in which the main goal is to introduce kids to the basic structure of government. The next bite at the apple doesn’t come until 8th grade, when social studies classrooms are required to cover things like the Constitution. It isn’t until high school that curriculum requirements finally give social studies teachers a devoted chunk of time. But Caldwell says it’s still a huge challenge to “give someone who’s 16 all of the skills, knowledge and dispositions to be a good citizen” in the 80 or so classroom hours allotted for the subject. “It’s simply not enough time.”

What teachers and students are doing with those hours is increasingly becoming the subject of hot public debate too. Recent examples, like the controversy over teaching critical race theory, showcase this intensity, but Caldwell says teachers often face more nuanced challenges on the day to day.

“The core challenge is that kids are most engaged with the things that resonate with their lived experience, but those are the things that will get you in trouble as a teacher,” Caldwell explains. “For example, let’s say you’re teaching the First Amendment and free speech. If you stick with a historical example, like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which is 50 years old and well-settled law, you’ll be OK. If, however, you pick a case that’s floating around in the news and way closer to the students’ lives — like a student who ditches her pre-approved commencement speech and instead talks about women’s rights to abortion in Texas — then you’re asking for a call from a parent or a trip to your principal’s office. The administration’s view is usually that you could have taught the concept without the controversy.”

Caldwell says this tension has a major impact on subject selection by teachers, whose desire to give their students material that speaks to them is at odds with their own personal desires to avoid blowback from parents or actual discipline. This leaves educators looking for inventive ways to avoid this catch 22. For example, in Caldwell’s own classrooms, she often used an exercise involving a questionnaire that asked students their views on 15 current issues to give them a sense of where they fell on the political spectrum. The often surprising results gave the students a chance to think through their own political identities — and gave Caldwell an entrypoint to do instruction on minor parties and the challenges of a two-party system. Similarly, when engaging the students in community-based work, she found projects that required learning about local zoning or veterans issues would avoid a call from the principal — even though she says topics like trangender students on athletic teams, or whether refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance is protected speech, likely would have been better bets for engaging students.

Such compromises are simply a reality for social studies teachers these days, but Caldwell remains optimistic that a solid civics education is still attainable, even in uncivil times. In fact, another core skill she encourages teachers to teach is civility itself.

“If you’re going to have conversations about controversial things, your first mission as a teacher is to create a safe space,” Caldwell says. “You have to teach students that you may disagree with an idea and not the person. And you have to model that yourself, and correct gently when necessary, and bring the classroom back together as a community if things go sideways. One of the best things you can do is show the students that it’s OK to change your mind when you encounter new information, or admit you were wrong, or even apologize. I’ve done that in my own classroom, and that’s so powerful for students to see because those are the acts that can really lower the temperature. That, more than anything, is what we’re missing today — and that’s what this generation has a chance to get back.”

###

Ed.D. candidate Karen Caldwell is continuing her dissertation research into K-12 civics education all throughout 2021 and 2022. If you’d like to connect with her about her work, you can reach her at caldwelk@umich.edu. Or, if you’re interested in learning more about the Ed.D. program at ��-Dearborn, check out the main program page.

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Mon, 07/05/2021 - 13:14

Can the social studies classroom help a younger generation of Americans regain the ability to talk critically and calmly about tough issues?

Needed labor reform or driving a hard bargain?

stuxbury — Mon, 31 May 2021 17:56:46 +0000

Needed labor reform or driving a hard bargain? stuxbury Mon, 05/31/2021 - 13:56

President Joe Biden’s Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize, is at a stand still in the Senate after passing in the House.

Some are saying that if passed, the act would hurt the economy and take away worker independence. Others say it’s needed to protect workers from unfair labor practices and to have the ability to bargain for fair wages.

With strong rhetoric on both sides of the PRO Act, Economics Professor Bruce Pietrykowski, the author of the book Work whose long-term research area is workforce labor, shares what the act aims to do, the historic role of labor unions in the workplace, and what the research data shows about organized bargaining.

Question: What does the PRO Act aim to do, specifically?

Photo of Professor Bruce Pietrykowski

Bruce Pietrykowski: Studies show that if labor unions were as strong today as they were in the 1970s that all workers — both union and non-union — would be making more money and that the wealth inequality gap wouldn’t be so large. With the income gap between rich and poor widening, Americans see unions as an important institution worth supporting, according to a recent Gallup Poll.

The PRO Act would clamp down on the ability of management to interfere with organizing campaigns — for example, prohibiting employers from holding mandatory meetings in which employers try to persuade workers to vote against unionization. The PRO Act also would prohibit employers from permanently replacing workers who go on strike. In addition, it would assess monetary costs on companies, executives, and boards of directors that violate labor laws.

Q: Why was there a shift in the role of unions?

Pietrykowski: While President Biden is outspoken about being pro-union, this represents a major shift away from anti-union policies begun under President Reagan. Reagan’s administration was notoriously lax in enforcing labor laws. In the early 1980s, companies were given a green light to aggressively oppose unionization drives through intimidation and the dismissal of union activists. Since that time, unions have encountered barriers to organizing new workers and the percentage of unionized workers has greatly declined — 25% in 1980 compared to about 10% in 2020.

The PRO Act’s goal is to help to redress the imbalances that have eroded the right of workers to join unions and the right of unions to effectively represent workers by giving workers and unions more protections against abuses by employers and makes it clear that workers who want to form a union should be able to do so.

Q; What about workplaces who have workers who vote against unions, like we recently saw at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama?

Pietrykowski: If workers don’t want unions, they don’t need to have them. The act provides protection for people at workplaces that do.

As for Amazon, the company vigorously fought against the union. Workers received text messages, leaflets were placed in bathrooms, and workers were required to attend weekly meetings where company representatives would tell them the unions were going to negatively impact the workers. For example, they would tell workers that the union could force you to go out on strike — but neglected to add that the union members themselves are the ones who vote whether or not to strike.

Another factor is looming automation. For Amazon workers and others, there may be fear that voting for a union may accelerate the pace of automation. Automation is definitely an issue that unions — and our workforce as a whole — will need to creatively confront in the coming years.

However, it is good to know that in unionized plants, union leaders often play a role in managing the pace, scale and type of automation installed in a plant. In companies that have a strong union history, automation is introduced to reduce worker injuries, while still retaining the judgment and skill of the workers.

Q: Many people have argued that in a capitalistic society, people can choose to work for a different employer if they feel the environment is unfair or they can gain more in-demand skills. As a labor economist, what’s your take on that?

Pietrykowski: Growing up in Cleveland, I witnessed the ravages of deindustrialization, racial inequality, and wealth amidst poverty. The notion that the inequality I witnessed was mainly the result of individual choices and individual talent rang hollow to me. It propelled me to critically explore the field of labor economics.

Most economists look at the world as the outcome of individual choices, freely made, leading to the best possible outcome for all. As an unconventional economist, I was trained to look at the world through the lens of power and inequality.

Q: Let’s talk about research data. Do unions help reduce inequalities?

Pietrykowski: According to an Economics Institute Study published in April 2021, research shows that unions reduce racial disparities in wages and raise women’s wages, helping to counteract disparate labor market outcomes.

The research shows the economic effects of unionization on individual workers in general is pretty clear too. Unionized workers have higher wages and benefits — on average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 10.2% more in hourly wages than someone with similar position and experience in a non-unionized workplace in the same sector — and better working conditions overall.

In addressing income inequality, economists often default to the skills and education solution, arguing that if people only chose to upgrade their skills and get a degree, they could raise their income by moving into better-paying jobs. What gets left out of this story is that income inequality could also be reduced if the wages at the bottom of the income distribution — the wages of COVID’s essential workers, for instance — increased from poverty wages to living wages. Unions can play a role here.

The original slogan of the “Fight for $15” movement for a $15 minimum wage was “Fight for $15 and a Union.” If anything, the COVID crisis has shown that essential work is often where acknowledging each other as human beings is part of the service being provided. This type of work is not going to be easily automated. It’s here to stay and the workers who perform it deserve to earn a decent, respectable living.

Q: So there are societal and worker benefits to the PRO Act passing. What’s the benefit if you are a business?

Pietrykowski: From the business perspective, it is sometimes true that unions can depress company profits because collective bargaining by its very nature is intended to redistribute revenue from profits to wages. But there are benefits to companies too — research indicates that unionized workers in the U.S. are more productive workers. This can translate into higher profits and higher wages, which often reflects what happens when companies take a high-road strategy. Many of these companies are found on “Best Companies to Work For” lists, which is also beneficial for employee recruitment.

Some of these high-road companies are unionized. Others may have adopted the high-road strategy in order to avoid unionization. In either case, the result is a better working environment, a respected company reputation, and knowing your employees are earning a wage they can live on.

Interview by Sarah Tuxbury. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Professor Bruce Pietrykowski about this topic, please drop us a line at ��Dearborn-News@umich.edu.

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Mon, 05/31/2021 - 17:55

Economics Professor Bruce Pietrykowski shares what the federal PRO Act aims to do, the historic role of labor unions in the workplace and what the research data show about organized bargaining.

What’s going on with voting rights in Michigan?

lblouin — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:57:18 +0000

What’s going on with voting rights in Michigan? lblouin Mon, 04/26/2021 - 06:57

A collage graphic showing a hand feeding a ballot into a drop box, a security camera, and a "ID required" sticker.

In 2018, Michigan voters approved a constitutional expansion of voting rights that included no-reason absentee voting and same-day voter registration. Both proved consequential in the 2020 election, but now, the pendulum may be swinging the other way. As we’re seeing in states like Arizona and Georgia, Republicans in the Michigan legislature have introduced dozens of bills that would, if passed, add new restrictions on voting. Advocates say they’re necessary to protect the integrity of elections; critics call them voter suppression. So to learn more about what’s going on, we reached out to Dale Thomson and Julio Borquez — two ��-Dearborn political science professors who closely follow election issues. Our conversation with them below has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

So as of now, there are about 40 different voting-related bills that have been proposed by Michigan Republicans, covering everything from voter ID provisions to drop boxes. What would you say are some of the most significant proposals?

Dale: I think one of the biggest issues is voter ID, both for in-person voting and absentee voting. Under current law, in-person voters without photo ID simply have to sign an affidavit attesting that they are who they say they are. Their votes can be challenged, but they are not considered provisional, and there is no obligation for the person to provide ID to the clerk subsequent to voting. Under the new proposal, these votes would now be considered provisional and would not be counted unless the voter provides the necessary documentation to the clerk within six days. For absentee voting, the new laws would require voters to show their ID if they’re requesting the absentee ballot in person or provide a photocopy of their ID with the application if the request is by mail.

There are also new restrictions on drop boxes. First, clerks would have to monitor them with high-definition cameras; they already have to monitor them with video cameras. And the drop boxes would be locked at 5 p.m. on the day before election day, so after that deadline, you’d have to hand deliver your absentee ballot directly to the clerk’s office. There are other restrictions on clerks and the Secretary of State regarding sending absentee ballots. Clerks couldn’t send a prepaid postage envelope with the ballot, and the Secretary of State could not send out ballot applications unsolicited, or even send a link to the website that has the application.

Julio: That’s a great rundown. The only thing I would add in terms of context is not all of the provisions are what we’d call “restrictive.” We’ve seen this in other states’ packages, and we’re seeing it here in Michigan, but among this collection of proposals that would largely make it more difficult or inconvenient to vote, there are one or two provisions that look like attempts to expand access. For example, in Michigan, there is a “pre-registration” provision for young people so that when you went to get your driver’s license at the Secretary of State, you’d be automatically registered to vote when you turn 18. Another would require local clerks to open for early voting on the second Saturday before an election. So that gives Republicans a platform to say that they are trying to expand access, at least in a few areas.

So advocates of these bills often argue that they’re just common sense things we can do to protect the integrity of the voting system. But as political scientists who study this stuff, is there any evidence that there are big problems with election integrity?

Julio: No. That’s the short answer.

Dale: Absolutely not. And the Brennan Center is a great place to go if you want to read about this. The actual evidence that voter fraud occurs is infinitesimally small, and there is no evidence that even where it has occurred, it’s at any level that could change the outcome of an election.

So if we don’t have a big problem, what’s your take on why we’re seeing such a big push for these kinds of laws?

Julio: I think the context here has a short-term and longer-term component. The short-term is the 2022 election cycle, and Republicans have an eye on trying to take back control of the Senate and perhaps the House. And Republicans likely won’t benefit from bigger turnouts that you’d see with expanded ballot access. That’s the immediate motivator that could explain this intense push right now for these specific provisions. But beyond that, what’s going on here is that the Republican Party is now essentially a minority party in the United States. There are more Democrats than Republicans in the electorate. Republicans haven’t won the popular vote in the past four presidential elections. Most Americans disagree with the Republican Party on most major policy issues. And the core constituencies of the Republican Party are a shrinking proportion of the population and the electorate. So they’re not at a good starting point in terms of winning general elections. And one way to continue to thrive when you’re in that minority status is to find ways to place barriers to voting for your opponent’s constituencies.

Dale: This is an important point, because it’s not just about how many people are voting but who is voting. The data show these provisions clearly have a disproportionate impact on traditional Democratic constituencies, especially lower-income minority voters. Why is there a focus on absentee voting, for example? It’s because in the 2020 election, absentee voting strongly favored Democratic candidates relative to in-person voting. It’s the same with the voter ID requirements. Today, about 11 percent of people in the country don’t have the required ID, but it’s even higher for African American voters.

Julio: We should also point out that this is not the first time we’ve seen this. After the Obama victories, we saw a similar effort to pass new voting restrictions, particularly voter ID laws. For example, North Carolina is one of a few states where race is registered as part of your voter file. And we saw Republicans in the state legislature very deliberately requesting breakdowns by race of the kinds of government issued ID that people have. So they knew about differences in distribution of driver’s licenses versus other forms of ID, and they very meticulously planned their provisions around this — so much so that the courts struck them down.

Here in Michigan, given that we have a Democratic governor, most of these laws wouldn’t have much of a chance of getting passed. But knowing this, Republican leaders are now saying they plan to use this quirk of the ballot initiative process as a workaround. Can you explain that?

Dale: So to get a ballot initiative in front of voters, you have to first collect the number of signatures equivalent to 8 percent of the people who voted in the governor’s race in the last election. That number is 340,047 signatures. You have 180 days to gather those signatures, and once those are certified, the legislature has 40 days to pass the legislation as it’s written in the initiative. If they do, then it will not appear on the ballot, and the governor can’t veto it. Michigan, in fact, is one of only two states that prevents a veto by the governor. This really runs counter to the spirit of the citizen initiative process in a number of ways. The whole ballot initiative process is sold as a really democratic process because citizens can get legislation passed when the legislature won’t do it. But in this case, citizens aren’t even initiating it and won’t get to vote on it. This is significant to me because people often sign ballot initiative petitions because they feel something deserves to go in front of voters, not necessarily because they support it. I’ve done that myself. So people might not realize that their signature is essentially a vote in favor of these laws, because the whole strategy by the legislature is to approve it before it gets to voters.

Finally, let’s say these things do pass. I’ve heard some folks say the impact might not be that big a deal, because the other side is just going to organize even harder to get out their voters and make sure people have the right ID, etc. Georgia, or example, doesn’t have a reputation as a voter-friendly state, and Democrats were still able to overcome that because they were so well organized in 2020. What do you think of that argument?

Julio: What bothers me about that is that organizing around these burdens shouldn’t be necessary. I mean, is that what we want our elections to become? Organizing around burdens that make it difficult or inconvenient to vote? Voting isn’t supposed to be a Herculean thing to do. At least I don’t think so. So I find the basic premise behind that argument kind of hard to accept. There has to be more to our politics than winning.

Dale: I totally agree. We’ve been talking about this in my American Politics class, and some of my students see this just as playing the game and doing what it takes to win. Yet in this case, they’re not actually playing the game; they’re changing the rules of the game because they’re less likely to win if they played by the existing rules. But regardless, that’s not what politics is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be a game where victory is the ultimate goal. We’re supposed to have a system of government where people’s voices can be heard and people are driving policy decisions. But that’s not the focus today. The focus is on power, both for the advantages that power gives you but also for the sheer purposes of having power. And that’s very problematic for a democracy. Plus, as Julio alludes to, every dollar or minute spent trying to organize around these burdens is a dollar or minute you can’t spend campaigning for a candidate you’re really passionate about or doing something productive that actually makes your community better.

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Interview by Lou Blouin. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Associate Professors Dale Thomson or Julio Borquez on this topic, please drop us a line at ��Dearborn-News@umich.edu.

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Mon, 04/26/2021 - 10:53

Two ��-Dearborn political science professors break down the policy and politics of new proposals to change how voting works in Michigan.

Do undocumented immigrants pose a criminal threat?

stuxbury — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 21:22:48 +0000

Do undocumented immigrants pose a criminal threat? stuxbury Mon, 03/22/2021 - 17:22

Graphic illustrating the idea that crime and immigration is connected in America

When participating in an alternative spring break program on the U.S.-Mexico Border as a University of Michigan undergraduate student, Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies Assistant Professor Maya Barak had many conversations about the border and immigration policy. But one conversation stands out 15 years later.

Standing at the back of a migrant shelter just south of Nogales, a parent holding an infant asked her, “¿Te regalo?” Barak heard the desperation in the man’s voice: “Should I gift this baby to you?” Barak wasn’t sure if the question was serious. Later she found out that the man had plans to make the illegal — and dangerous — journey through the desert to the U.S. the following day and was afraid of what might happen to his baby on the trek.

“A parent wanted to give their child a better life so badly that they would entrust their baby to someone from another country in the hopes of reuniting on the other side of the border. It’s heartbreaking,” says Barak, who later contributed to the book Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field (Oxford Press). “That is illegal from a policy standpoint. But a parent wanting a better life for their child is universally human. When thinking about immigration policy and reform, it’s important to remember that we are talking about people.”

Assistant Professor Maya Barak

Barak, who teaches Crimmigration and Criminal Justice Research Methods at ��-Dearborn, has an educational background in justice and criminology. But her experiences working with migrants and immigrants, as well as U.S. government offices and law enforcement, gives her a layered perspective when it comes to immigration law.

“Immigration policy touches on nearly all other aspects of law and policy from family law to labor law to criminal law. Any judge will tell you that the complexity of U.S. immigration law is perhaps rivaled only by tax law in terms of its many intricacies,” she says. “Perhaps it’s this complexity that leads to the idea that immigrants, documented or undocumented, pose a criminal threat.”

Barak shares a few points to give a better understanding of why deviant behavior and immigration is connected in political rhetoric, news stories and the American consciousness — and offers how research counters these messages.

Crime and immigration have been united in the U.S. mindset for hundreds of years.

History books tell us that Great Britain sent convicted criminals to the “New World” to help establish colonies. But not long after the Revolutionary War, colonists put a stop to that practice. “One of the first moves the founding fathers made after establishing the U.S. was to ban the practice of shipping convicted criminals off to the colonies (1788). In that moment, crime and immigration were forever united in the American mindset,” Barak says. “They no longer wanted it to be considered Britain's dumping ground. They began sending the ships back.”

Adding to that: In 1790, American citizenship became reserved for free white males. Then came the Naturalization Act of 1798, which established the power to deport. “From very early on, we see a distinction between those “deserving” of a life in the U.S. and those deemed “undeserving’.” Barak says notions of who is deserving and undeserving of being part of American society has changed over the years, but the discourse, politics and strategies of exclusion — for the most part — remain the same.

The public and state attention didn’t shift to undocumented immigrants until the late 1960s with the end of the Bracero Program, which was a U.S. laborer contract program with Mexico. “By the mid-1980s, we see the political narratives shifting and the emergence of a moral panic surrounding illegal immigration,” she says. “Research shows that immigrants try to avoid legal confrontations and that undocumented workers often pay taxes, but don’t get benefits. So the panic over fraud and crime is largely unfounded.”

Data shows that immigrants — with or without documentation — commit less crime than established U.S. citizens.

Barak says many of her students are surprised to learn that, for the last century, study after study has demonstrated that immigrants — with or without documentation — offend at lower rates than native-born Americans. She says there are several reasons for this.

First, immigrants don’t want to get in trouble because they have a fear of deportation and generally want to avoid contact with law enforcement. “While doing research for my book project, I met a man who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and placed on a plane to be deported — only to be taken off the plane because they realized he actually became a U.S. citizen through his mother’s naturalization. As a community organizer, I came across immigrant women who refused to call the police to report domestic abuse because they worried they would be asked if they had papers. All it takes is one story like these in a community to create fear and distrust.”

Second, close-knit communities often have a behavior code or expectations. Research also shows that when looking at two communities of similar economic status, the immigrant one often has less crime than the established American one. “That’s because there’s collective efficacy. People know each other and their families. They often share culture, goals and values. That connectedness leads to an environment where people watch out for each other and will intervene if someone is performing an action that violates community trust.”

Most undocumented people in the U.S. came here legally.

Barak says another common misconception is that immigrants who are living in the U.S. without documentation didn’t come here “the right way.” Of the 10.5 million undocumented people living in the U.S. today, more entered the country with authorization — arrived via plane with a valid visa and passport or drove through a border checkpoint — than without.

So how did these people end up without a valid immigration status? Barak says some failed to renew their visas on time or missed an appointment. “That can result from something as seemingly insignificant as a piece of important mail from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services winding up lost or at the wrong address,” she says. Others come to the U.S. with non-immigrant visas — meaning temporary visas that do not have a pathway to citizenship — like a student visa and overstay the visa expiration date. Although it is often cited as a reason for closed borders, Barak says only a very small number of immigrants lose their authorization to live, work, study or travel in the U.S. due to a criminal conviction.

Immigration is a federal issue that should transcend political labels.

Barak stresses that immigration — which is a federal-level issue — goes beyond conservative and progressive points of view. “Sometimes it’s important to remember that crime and crime control are things that we’ve created, as are terms like conservative and progressive. If we took labels off and politicians stopped worrying about being ‘too conservative’ or ‘too progressive’ we may have more success in our immigration policies.”

She says often local law enforcement officers are tasked with enforcing federal laws, which in turn can put them at odds with immigrants in the communities they serve. “Local officers have to enforce, or at least comply with, federal immigration laws,” she says. So if you want change, Barak says go to people with connections at the top.

She suggests a few actions to take. Write a letter to your congressperson. Keep educating yourself by seeking out a variety of perspectives on immigration law. And volunteer for immigrant rights focused organizations; She’s involved with Justice For Our Neighbors and the organization has partnered with Barak’s Crimmigration course for an Academic Service Learning Project.

Barak says education is key. She’s proud to have students graduate and land positions in local and federal law enforcement and legal fields. And she hopes they take a fuller understanding of American law and immigration with them.

Interview by Sarah Tuxbury. If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview Assistant Professor Maya Barak about this topic, please drop us a line at ��Dearborn-News@umich.edu.

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Mon, 03/22/2021 - 21:21

Assistant Professor Maya Barak shares her “crimmigration” research to give a better understanding of why deviant behavior and immigration are connected in political rhetoric, media messages and the American consciousness — and what the evidence says about