Should we require American Presidents to be born American?

--Is there something about being born in a country that makes you more loyal to it?--Should the political system protect the people from themselves?--Do the people in a democracy get what they deserve?--Should Arnold Schwarzenegger be allowed to run for President?

Should Constitutional law mandate that an American president be born on US soil? The roundtable probed the ways in which our existing law mandating such was pragmatic and/or symbolic, and debated whether the law was necessary or irrelevant, reasonable or fundamentally problematic. In terms of practical benefit, was the law a necessary protection or outdated and less meaningful provision? In terms of more symbolic considerations, was the law a reasonable requirement or a form of un-American unfairness?

We began by reviewing the legal intricacies of how the Constitution defines presidential eligibility. To be eligible to hold the nation’s highest office, a candidate must have resided in the U.S. for at least 14 years and not only be a U.S. citizen but one “natural-born.” Such a rule deems naturalized citizens and those born abroad to American parents ineligible.

Such a law was written into the Constitution at the time of the nation’s founding, a time when limited transportation made one’s birthplace a good indicator of where one spent most of one’s life. Yet these conditions no longer hold in today’s rapidly-globalizing world, where transport options more rapid than the boat make itinerant lifestyles much more possible and common. What, then, could the continued relevance of the law be?

The Roundtable first considered the law from a more utilitarian standpoint. What, if any, were the unique benefits brought about by having only American-born presidents? Perhaps it was a question of who could best be trusted to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Some in the Roundtable advocated that matters of national security required an absolute dedication to American interests towards the US best found in those native-born. A president must possess an almost “irrational,” automatic, and ingrained sense of preference and loyalty towards the US not interfered with conflicting identifications with another country which even naturalized citizens may retain. Yet others argued that dedication of service to the US need not correspond to being native-born. Notably, figures such Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright served as examples of foreign-born public servants who had dedicated themselves just as greatly as native born officials. Thus, the law could likely preclude a number of worthy individuals from being able to serve as president.

Perhaps the issue thus went beyond a question of national security and competence. Clearly the intent and meaning of the law was not just practical but also symbolic; after all, was there not something that distinguished this restriction from other requirements, such as one regarding age? Beyond questions of utility, the law related to issues of culture and tradition, even the sanctity of “Americanness.” Beyond an important governing role, the leader of the American nation holds symbolic importance and it seems to be for this reason that presidential campaigns involve close public scrutiny not just of candidates’ policy platforms, but all aspects of their lives and characters.

Indeed, the intent behind the law in question seemed to be that an American president “be American,” yet what does and should this mean today when considering presidential eligibility? Candidates themselves know well the need to prove to the electorate a sense of Americanness that the electorate looks for. Yet they most often seem to equate this with ensuring the relevance of one’s image to mainstream American culture and ability to relate to the lifestyles of the majority of Middle America. This may be little of concern in itself, yet perhaps may account for the overwhelming similarities in the backgrounds of presidents up till the present. The Roundtable then thought through a brainstormed list of factors that that could or should be used to define what is truly American. A general consensus was that a good number of factors such as religion and race might have commonly been used in the past but ought not to, and that factors such as language and culture were more ambiguous, but the factors of values and ideologies of the Constitution were the most undisputed as fundamental criteria. A Roundtabler thus firmly advocated that such core American values ought to determine true Americanness more so than considerations of culture since they have remained constant while culture constantly changes.

Given this consideration, one could argue that a law that uses criteria linked to identity and circumstances out of individual control is not strongly tied to what is most fundamentally linked to Americanness. Furthermore, such a law could be seen as rather fundamentally un-American in principle, denying equal opportunity and showing a lack of faith in the democratic process that allows voters to ultimately decide who is fit to lead. Yet, some Roundtablers who might not include such a law if hypothetically creating a new constitution made a case against removing it from our existing one. Perhaps it is worth considering the components of the Constitution as a “compounded investment,” so to say, acknowledging the inherent value of our democratically-created founding documents as tradition in itself.

What Should Determine the Value of a Human Life

(This post courtesy of Public Relations Officer Danie Monahan)

The members of the Roundtable turned its minds to one of the most difficult questions facing humanity. Does the uniqueness of life give it its value? Or is it conscious thought and self-awareness? Or does the value of life lie in the ability to form social connections through empathy? Where exactly ought we to draw the line between those we value as human and those that we don't? What causes us to make decisions about whose life is more important in situations when we don't uphold human life as the ultimate value?

Before we could effectively dive into these questions, we had to get some definitions out on the table. First of all, the Roundtable decided to try and focus on what should give life value, not what does in practice. One member pointed out that, as humans, we would surely value human life over other species simply because we are ourselves human. A "Prisoner's Dilemma of human existence" ensures that we value those who cooperate with us more than those who don't, leading to a “tit-for-tat” morality. Another member argued that we must value all human life equally because the social implications of not doing so are dire. Similarly, we value food animals less highly because we have evolved to kill them for sustenance. While these insights proved intriguing, we decided to ask how each of us should, individually, value life.

Secondly, one member volunteered the introductory psychology definition of consciousness. Consciousness requires perception and sensation, but also self-awareness and the ability to perceive relationships between the self and the environment. A classic test used to gauge the level of consciousness of animals is to determine whether they recognize themselves in a mirror.

Many roundtablers agreed that consciousness had great value, and that hurting a conscious being clearly was worse than hurting an unconscious one. Should dolphins lives consequently be valued more highly than a human infant? They are certainly more self-aware.

In the more general sense, the Roundtable discussed the unique mystery of reproduction as a source of importance for life. We cannot control how to shape a person, while for all human purposes we can accurately reproduce plants or robots. Furthermore, we value a puppy less before it becomes an irreplaceable part of a human family. On the spiritual side, the uniqueness of a human soul would be the source of life's importance. As we explored this argument, we found it would imply that fetuses, who are in our day genetically irreproduceable, would hold value for their uniqueness. However, a "metal brain" would not hold value because it was constructed according to a plan. Most members agreed that a perfect reproduction of a self-aware human brain would definitely hold as much value as a human being.

One discussant hypothesized a value system based on pain and pleasure as the ultimate evil and good. For conscious beings, we should take the moral action that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain in a utilitarian fashion. Thus the value of life is not all-or-nothing but rather falls on a continuous scale. The lives of mentally disabled people are just as valued as the rest of us when they feel the same spectrum of emotions.

Not completely satisfied with any of the various systems proposed, the roundtable shifted discussion to the difference between the values of adults and infants. We realized that when someone runs into a burning building, they save the baby first. Why should we value infants, and even fetuses, so highly? One student thought the value of human life lay in the potential to shape one's own development and create one's own individuality. Under this definition, the value of a life is not defined at a particular moment but rather as a sum of present and potential future conditions. Another member noted that finding meaning and direction in life is crucial to human survival in a way that differentiates us from animals.

As the discussion came to a close, the general opinion seemed to approve of this last definition. However, as we finished the pepperoni pizza, we agreed it would be best to be vegetarian in order to preserve the value of all life.

Should we pay kids to do well in school?

Would it work?-- Should schools have honor roll?-- Is learning valuable for its own sake?-- And if it is, how can we get kids to value it as such?-- What are we doing wrong?

To pay or not to pay? Particularly in lower-income districts with histories of struggling students, public school systems from New York City to Texas have taken to incentivizing students to strive for attendance and high grades through a variety of cash payments and expensive goodies. But is it a good idea for schools to provide material rewards for academic performance?

For many of us, the idea of mixing the classroom space with cold hard cash brought up an initial shuddering of sorts. The YSR, ever-true champions of intellectual inquiry, were quick to advocate for the sacredness of learning for learning’s sake. The thought of introducing monetary motivation into the realm of schooling deeply disturbed us, as it seemed to threaten the idea of pre-college education as a “sacred space” for intellectual growth free from the pressures of pre-professionalism.

Yet while the Roundtable held these truths to be self-evident, discussants reminded us of the issue at hand was not isolated to theoretical ideals but rather also to a real life, rather extreme reality- that of currently-failing schools and struggling students. Perhaps the dire conditions of certain public schools, ones in which entering classes of 400 dwindled to around 150 by graduation, and ones located as nearby as our own New Haven, were harsh realities that those from more privileged backgrounds needed to be reminded of. In these cases, school policymakers acted with a more pressing goal in mind – prior to being able to the elevation of a sacred space, school systems needed to ensure the survival of that space in the first place by keeping kids from dropping out of schools and saying goodbye to their future chances of climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. Another roundtabler adamantly stressed that these incentivizing initiatives amounted to an emergency project with the goal of lowering the income gap, a cause so important that the benefits of such projects must outweigh objections to it.

Yet of course, qualms remained, especially when, for argument’s sake, we considered the idea of expanding the payment-for-school idea more broadly. The roundtable agreed that promoting the commoditization of educational performance and a culture that devalues genuine intellectual passion be avoided as much as possible. Additionally, the incentive payments could at best be just a short-term solution to larger problems in the American school system. Thus even those who advocated for the incentive programs in the case of failing schools generally agreed that the benefits of such programs only outweighed their setbacks in the most dire cases.

Other roundtablers still maintained that in such situations the ends still failed to justify the means. Yet perhaps objections to the incentive program could be reconciled not just on grounds of their practical benefits, but on a fundamental level as well. Our greatest gut objections came from the thought of the crudeness of monetary payments sullying one’s motivations for intellectual accomplishment. Yet a roundtabler pointed out that even many of the most driven “good students” to a large extent have craved and been motivated by external recognition of some sort, even if not monetary. Recognition and the promise of future reward are inexplicably tied to the motivation and behavior of nearly all of us. Perhaps in the case of low-income, struggling students the small cash payments and free ipods represented the form of sorely-lacked recognition and encouragement that could speak to them most and that could most effectively plug the “recognition gap” between them and their more well-off counterparts.

For some roundtablers, financial rewards for school still remain an impermissible violation of the sacred space of education. Yet for others, they remained the best way to give certain kids a fighting chance of staying within it.