Some ancient theologians argued that the Israelites deserved a share of Egypt’s wealth after being enslaved for centuries. Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images Reparations to Black Americans for centuries of slavery and oppression have been discussed for a long time. But ever since journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” in… Continue reading Ancient Christian thinkers made a case for reparations that has striking relevance today
Burkina Faso’s former President, Blaise Compaore, convicted for the murder of Thomas Sankara. SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images On April 6, 2022, a military tribunal in Burkina Faso found 11 men, including the former president, Blaise Compaoré, guilty of “attacks on state security, complicity in murder and concealment of a corpse.” This marked a historic… Continue reading Guilty verdict in Sankara trial shows power of activists to fight impunity in Burkina Faso
Several school districts across the country will close in observance of Eid, a holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images Some public school districts across the nation will be closed on Monday, May 2, 2022, or Tuesday, May 3, 2022, in observance of the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, a festive celebration… Continue reading Students lead more public schools to close for Islamic holidays
Several offshore wind farms are planned for the U.S. Northeast. Scott Eisen/Getty Images In Rhode Island, home to the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., most people support expanding offshore wind power – with one important caveat. Our research shows they’re less likely to support a wind power project if its energy flows to… Continue reading New Englanders support more offshore wind power – just don’t send it to New York
A man identified only as Viktor shows his neighbor’s grave in Bucha, Ukraine. It was too dangerous to go to the cemetery. Jana Cavojska/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Olena Koval found out that her husband was dead via text message. He was shot by Russian soldiers inside their home in Bucha while she was sheltering… Continue reading How burying the dead keeps the living human
Ukrainian refugees wait near the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico. AP Photo/Gregory Bull In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees. Hundreds of those refugees have now arrived at the southern border of the United States seeking asylum, after flying to Mexico on tourist visas. At the… Continue reading How race and religion have always played a role in who gets refuge in the US
Reparations to Black Americans for centuries of slavery and oppression have been discussed for a long time. But ever since journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic in 2014, the conversation has taken on a new urgency. In 2021 a House committee voted to create a commission to consider reparations.
However, debates over compensating a group of people for past injuries or abuses date back to at least the early centuries of the common era. As a professor of theology who teaches about Jewish and Christian antiquity, I have studied how the logic of reparations has roots in the Hebrew Bible and in early Christian biblical interpretation.
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies during a 2019 hearing on slavery reparations.Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Exodus from Egypt
The classic text for thinking about reparations is the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, recounted in detail in the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament.
The Israelites had been enslaved by the Egyptians and subjected to forced labor for hundreds of years. As the story goes, through divine intervention and the leadership of the prophet Moses, the people were set free and allowed to depart Egypt.
As God announces the plan in advance to Moses, he assures him:
“I will bring this people into such favor with the Egyptians that, when you go, you will not go empty-handed; each woman shall ask her neighbor and any woman living in the neighbor’s house for jewelry of silver and of gold, and clothing, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters; and so you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
When the Israelites ask as commanded, the Egyptians surprisingly comply. “And so,” the text laconically summarizes, “they plundered the Egyptians.”
Literal or allegorical plunder?
The story seems to have been a source of embarrassment to Jews and Christians in antiquity and even in more recent times.
Whether deceit was involved has been a matter of scholarly discussion, but at least one ancient historian used the account to paint the Jews of his day in a dim light. Around the turn of the millennium, Pompeius Trogus wrote that Moses led the Israelites in “carrying off by stealth the sacred utensils of the Egyptians.”
Perhaps in light of similar accusations, some Jews and, subsequently, Christians, interpreted the text as a story about symbolic and not literal plunder.
The Jewish Alexandrian philosopher Philo, an older contemporary of Jesus in the first century, interpreted the event literally and justified the Israelites’ actions.
“For what resemblance is there between forfeiture of money and deprivation of liberty,” he wrote, “for which men of sense are willing to sacrifice not only their substance but their life?”
In other words, the Israelites were in the right to take material goods from the Egyptians since the Egyptians had deprived them of the far greater good of freedom.
But in another treatise, Philo gave an allegorical interpretation in which the Egyptians’ wealth represented pagan philosophy.
He felt that ideas that might originate in “pagan” philosophy could be put to good use – or “plundered” – for Jewish purposes. By way of comparison, one might imagine a contemporary preacher using, say, insights from psychoanalysis to elucidate the meaning of a biblical passage.
Two centuries later, the Christian scholar Origen of Alexandria used a similar argument to make the case that “pagan” philosophy should be studied by Christians as the “adjunct to Christianity” – to prepare for and supplement true Christian teaching. He justifies this taking of intellectual property by using the example of the Israelites making off with the Egyptians’ possessions. He understood the biblical text’s account of the plundering of the Egyptians to be a symbolic authorization for Christians to take the intellectual property of the surrounding pagan culture.
Subsequent Christians theologians, from St. Augustine in the late fourth century onward throughout the medieval period, took up this line of interpretation.
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‘Not just a few dishes’
But Philo’s literal understanding of the passage – that the Israelites took property from the Egyptians as a form of just repayment for their enslavement – also found followers among the early Christians.
In the second century A.D., a debate raged in the Christian Church as to whether the Jewish scriptures should be authoritative for Christians. Marcion, a charismatic leader from the Black Sea region, contended that the Hebrew Bible attested an inferior god and so should be discarded. He and his followers urged that it contained morally reprehensible stories, and held up the plundering of the Egyptians as an example.
The theologians Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian of North Africa, who argued for what ultimately became the form of Christian belief backed by political authorities, however, disagreed.
Irenaeus replied to the Marcionite argument in his treatise “Against Heresies,” which contains a remarkable display of the logic of reparations.
He writes that the Egyptians held the Israelites in “abject slavery” while at the same time contemplating their “utter annihilation.” Meanwhile, the Israelites built them “fenced cities” and made them even more wealthy.
“In what way, then,” Irenaeus asks, “did the Israelites act unjustly, if out of many things they took a few?”
His argument is straightforward: The Israelites deserved to be repaid for their forced labor. They contributed to the wealth of the Egyptians, and so had a right to a share of it.
Some 25 years later, Tertullian wrote a systematic refutation of Marcion’s position, entitled “Against Marcion.” In it, he repeated some of Irenaeus’ arguments, including his case for reparations.
Tertullian imagines a court in his own day hearing the claims of “the Hebrews.” He argues that no amount of gold and silver could repay the Israelites for their hardship. “[They] were free men reduced to slavery,” he writes. “If their legal representatives were to display in court no more than their shoulders scarred with the abusive outrage of whippings, any judge would have agreed that the Hebrews must receive in recompense not just a few dishes and flagons … but the whole of those rich men’s property.”
Particularly notable is the fact that Tertullian makes the case for reparations to be paid to the descendants of the Israelites who had been forcibly enslaved centuries earlier. Although the force of the passage is driven by a debate about scriptural interpretation, its logic strikingly anticipates the case for reparations in the U.S. today.
David Lincicum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(16257) "Getting police and community on board with reforms is crucial for success.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
As America continues to grapple with racism and police killings, federal action over police reform has stalled in Congress. But at the state level there is movement and steps toward reform are underway in many U.S. cities, including Philadelphia; Oakland, California; and Portland, Oregon.
It’s too soon to expect substantial improvement from these recently proposed remedies.
But as scholars of criminal justice – one a former police officer of 10 years – we know America has been here before. From Ferguson to Baltimore and Oakland to Chicago, numerous city police departments have undergone transformation efforts following controversial police killings. But these and other reform movements haven’t lived up to their promises.
Resisting change
After the shooting death in Missouri of unarmed teen Michael Brown in 2014, police in Ferguson agreed to a reform program that included anti-bias training and an agreement to end stop, search and arrest practices that discriminate on the basis of race.
Commentators have pointed to a resistance to change among officers and an inability to garner community buy-in as reasons for the slowdown in progress in Baltimore.
Part of the problem, as seen with Baltimore, is that federal intervention does not appear to guarantee lasting change. Research shows that Department of Justice regulations aimed at reform only slightly reduce police misconduct. There is also no evidence that national efforts targeting the use of force alone mitigate police killings.
Community-led reform
One beacon of hope is the Cincinnati Police Department. Twenty years ago, residents in Cincinnati experienced events similar to what many cities have faced in more recent years. An unarmed Black man, Timothy Thomas, was shot dead by officers in 2001, sparking widespread unrest. It led Cincinnati to enter into a different model of reform: a collaborative agreement.
Touted by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch as a national model for community-led police reform, the collaborative agreement saw the police department, civic government, police unions and local civil rights groups act in partnership for a reform program backed by court supervision.
The resulting changes to use-of-force policies, a focus on community-based solutions to crime, and robust oversight brought about improved policing. A 2009 Rand evaluation of the collaborative agreement found it resulted in a reduction in crime, positive changes in citizens’ attitudes toward police and fewer racially biased traffic stops. There were also fewer use-of-force incidents and officer and arrestee injuries under the collaborative agreement.
But it isn’t perfect. Cincinnati’s Black residents continue to be disproportionately arrested – likely owing to the concentration of crime, service calls and police deployments in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Figures from 2018 show Black Cincinnati residents were roughly three times as likely to be arrested as their white counterparts.
Cincinnati’s collaborative agreement contained a number of elements that experts say are needed if police reforms are to be successful: strong leadership, flexible, goal-oriented approaches, effective oversight and externally regulated transparency.
Moreover, it depended on police officials’ ability to cultivate community investment and overcome resistance from police officers and police unions.
Community confidence is critical to police reform and community safety. When citizens view police as legitimate and trustworthy, they are more likely to report crimes, cooperate during police investigations, comply with directives and work with police to find solutions to crime.
Beyond collaboration
Efforts like that in Cincinnati that put community engagement at the heart of police reforms undoubtedly are strides in the right direction. But they can go only so far. A noticeable shortcoming in most police reform programs is a focus on what is the right thing to do during confrontations with the public, rather than on trying to avert those situations in the first place.
Fatal police shootings often happen during police stops and arrests – situations that carry increased risks of citizen resistance and violent police response.
Scaling back low-level enforcement, such as arrests for vagrancy and loitering – much of which has little public safety advantage – and having police partner with civilian responders for mental health, homelessness and drug-related calls, could mean fewer opportunities for violent police encounters.
Some departments have begun to change their enforcement policies along these lines. The Gwinnett County Police Department in Georgia, for example, stopped making arrests and issuing citations for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
A 2018 study of traffic stops in Fayetteville, North Carolina, found that redirecting enforcement away from minor infractions – such as broken taillights and expired tags – toward the more serious violations of speeding and running traffic lights resulted in reduced crime and a narrowed racial gap in stops and searches.
Devoting less time to policing such activity would also free up officers’ time to devote to such endeavors as analyzing crime trends, conducting wellness checks on elderly residents and mentoring community youth. I (Thaddeus Johnson) felt this as a police officer on the street, and I see it as a criminal justice scholar now.
The examples of Cincinnati, Ferguson and Baltimore show that getting community buy-in is crucial if attempts to improve policing are to be successful. We believe that evaluating officers’ performance and rewarding them based on community-oriented activities – rather than just the number of stops and arrests – could foster the support necessary for lasting reform.
Thaddeus L. Johnson is affiliated with the Council on Criminal Justice (Senior Research Fellow).
Natasha N. Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(11185) "Burkina Faso's former President, Blaise Compaore, convicted for the murder of Thomas Sankara. SIA KAMBOU/AFP via Getty Images
On April 6, 2022, a military tribunal in Burkina Faso found 11 men, including the former president, Blaise Compaoré, guilty of “attacks on state security, complicity in murder and concealment of a corpse.”
This marked a historic moment for the West African nation. The trial which began in October 2021 was intended to uncover the truth behind the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso’s revered leader, Thomas Sankara.
In practical terms, the verdict may not have an immediate effect on the lives of the perpetrators. Compaoré and his closest lieutenant, Yacinthe Kafando, were tried in absentia, as they currently reside in Côte d’Ivoire. Another defendant, Gilbert Diendéré is already in prison in Burkina Faso for attempting a coup in 2015.
But for the country of Burkina Faso, Sankara’s widow and civil society across the continent the verdict has enormously important symbolic power. It is an important step toward ending the culture of impunity that has shielded powerful men who have ruled since Sankara’s assassination from justice.
The historic verdict has established a public record and shown that powerful men cannot simply get away with their crimes for their entire lives.
Sankara and Compaoré
Sankara became president through a coup in 1983. He was aided in part by Blaise Compaoré, one of Sankara’s military comrades.
After renaming his country Burkina Faso (“Land of the Upright”) and implementing progressive reforms such as mass vaccination, equal rights for women, and anti-corruption efforts, Sankara became a symbol for social justice in Africa.
Unfortunately, he also became a target of Western ire with his anti-imperialist politics.
On October 15, 1987, Sankara and 12 others were assassinated by a group of commandos while in the party leadership compound. Compaoré took power as a result of the coup.
Compaoré ruled Burkina Faso for 27 years. In his first years in charge he quickly overturned Sankara’s most progressive policies and cultivated relationships with leaders of terrorist networks operating in the Sahel.
He won ‘re-election’ multiple times. He and his allies also evaded justice for Sankara’s assassination.
In 2014 massive demonstrations followed Compaoré’s attempt to revise the constitution to allow himself to run for another term as president. The efforts of the citizen-led movement Balai Citoyen (“Citizen’s Broom”) led to Compaoré’s removal from power.
The movement was galvanised by popular musicians like Serge Bambara (aka “Smockey”) and Karim Sama (aka “Sams K’Le Jah”), together with other activists in the country. It used the lack of justice for Sankara – and other killings such as that of the popular journalist, Norbert Zongo – as a catalyst for their demonstrations and movement-building.
Without the work of Balai Citoyen and other civil society organisations, the trial of Compaoré and his gang would not have been possible.
The guilty verdict should therefore be celebrated as a landmark victory for democracy and people’s movements in Africa that can serve as a model for others.
Transition to democracy still in the balance
The verdict sentencing Compaoré to life in prison may have beneficial effects beyond its symbolism.
In effect, the guilty verdict and life sentence have shut the door on his political ambitions in Burkina Faso since he cannot return without fear of being arrested.
It could also put an end to continued interference in the country. Some civil society leaders fear he has deliberately contributed to destabilising Burkina Faso since 2016 to pave the way for his return.
The nation continues to face instability, enduring attacks in the north along the border with Mali by jihadists linked to al Qaeda, the Islamic State group, other armed groups and highway robbers.
Some terrorist groups are suspected of receiving support from Compaoré.
Some also suspect the military junta that came to power in January 2022 may contain Compaoré sympathisers. On January 23, 2022, a group calling itself the “Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration” led another coup ousting the democratically elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.
The conduct of the trial itself puts the new military junta on notice that mechanisms now exist to investigate and determine the truth behind leaders’ crimes, even decades later.
The trial’s effect on the culture of impunity can also be seen in the fact that the current junta released Kaboré, the ousted president, from custody the day after the verdict was announced.
While ECOWAS and others had been calling for Kaboré’s release from detention by the military officers who led the coup from day one, it was not until the guilty verdict was handed down that the junta finally did so. The timing suggests that the guilty verdict sent a signal in defence of the deposed president’s human rights and personal security.
The verdict may also help further the trial of François Compaoré, who faces extradition from France for murdering Norbert Zongo in 1998. Zongo has long been an important figure for citizen-activists in Burkina Faso. His work directly challenged the power structure through the publishing of investigative journalism intended to inform the people and cultivate demanding citizens.
Engaged citizens and the way forward
Burkinabè citizens watch with apprehension as talks about a transition to democracy continue. Burkina Faso has a long way to go to restore peace and security across the country. And the 2022 coup has complicated the nation’s ability to combat the terrorism and instability that have persisted since 2016.
But the guilty verdict shows that the nonviolent activism of groups like Balai Cityoen are making a difference. Similar groups across Africa have been paying close attention to Burkina Faso and the results of the trial. These include Y’en a Marre (“Enough is Enough”) in Senegal and La LUCHA (“Struggle for Change”) and Filimbi (“Blow of the Whistle”) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Activists in these citizen-led movements, connected through their music, journalism and civic engagement, continue to risk their own freedom and safety to push for change and fight against impunity within their own countries.
Their work deserves the attention and support of the entire international community that supports human rights and defend democracy worldwide.
Todd Laufenberg, a Master’s student at the University of Arizona in the Human Rights Practice program contributed to this article.
Phyllis Taoua does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(11892) "Several school districts across the country will close in observance of Eid, a holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images
Some public school districts across the nation will be closed on Monday, May 2, 2022, or Tuesday, May 3, 2022, in observance of the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, a festive celebration marking the end of the month of Ramadan, a month of fasting observed by Muslims worldwide. In the following Q&A, Amaarah DeCuir, an education researcher who specializes in issues of concern to Muslim students, illuminates some of the forces that are moving more and more school districts to close in observance of the Islamic holiday.
How common is it for public schools to close for Islamic holidays?
By the time New York City schools began to close for Eid, several smaller school districts had already been doing so for more than a decade. For instance, the Irvington school district in New Jersey began to close for the Eid al-Fitr in 2003.
In recent years, more and more school districts have begun to close in observance of Eid holidays. Those school districts include districts such as the Burlington School District in Vermont, which began to close for Eid al-Fitr in 2010, and Detroit, which began to close its public schools for Eid holidays in 2019.
But absenteeism isn’t the only factor at play. Some school districts are beginning to observe Eid holidays as a matter of commitment to equal recognition for Muslim families.
In the Hopkinton Public Schools, in Massachusetts, one school board leader noted that closing school for Eid holidays could attract a more diverse pool of educators by not forcing them to take personal days to observe the holiday. In Detroit, a school leader said that closing for Eid holidays was a statement to celebrate the diversity of the community.
Eid al-Fitr is celebrated by Muslims across the world.
Who is leading efforts to get public schools to close for Eid?
In many cases Muslim students are initiating efforts to gain support for schools to close for Eid al-Fitr. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, for instance, a group of eighth grade students in a civics class got the school board to close schools for Eid al-Fitr. In Montclair, New Jersey, school officials decided to close for Eid as called for by a fifth grade Muslim girl’s online petition.
In Iowa City, Iowa, a Muslim high school girl advocated for over three years to promote the observance of Eid before the school system there decided to do so. And a student in Detroit helped persuade school board members there through an op-edin the Detroit Free Press to close in observance of Eid.
In some cases, such as in Baltimore, efforts to get public schools to close in observance of Eid have been described as a “decadeslong battle.” I predict that as more Muslim students call for public schools to close in observance of Eid, it won’t take nearly as long for additional schools to recognize the value of honoring Islamic holidays as other schools have done in recent years.
What about calculating when the holidays begin?
Since Muslims go by a lunar calendar, which is about 11 days shorter than the 365-day solar calendar that most Americans use, the exact date of Eid al-Fitr changes from year to year.
And not everyone is in agreement about when a particular lunar month begins. Some Muslims go by astronomical calculations to project the Islamic calendar well into the future. For instance, one Islamic calendar has projected specific Eid dates into the year 2045. Other Muslims prefer to use traditional methods of local moonsighting, which involves using the naked eye to actually see the crescent of the moon to determine the start and end of a lunar month.
This partially explains why there could be different start and end dates for Ramadan on any given year that are one day apart. School district leaders may want to defer to whichever method is used by local Muslim authorities.
Amaarah DeCuir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(12930) "Several offshore wind farms are planned for the U.S. Northeast.Scott Eisen/Getty Images
In Rhode Island, home to the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., most people support expanding offshore wind power – with one important caveat.
Our research shows they’re less likely to support a wind power project if its energy flows to another state, and especially if it goes to a rival state. We found the same sentiment holds true on the New Hampshire coast.
Socialscientistslike us call this “regionalism,” and our research suggests it could have serious repercussions for the renewable energy transition.
Think about the rivalries and sometimes outright animosity among baseball fans. Few regional rivalries are as intense as the one between Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees fans. More than mere bluster, these place-based identities can strongly influence people’s thoughts and attitudes about rival cities in ways that extend far beyond the game. An allegiance to the Yankees can even influence perception of the distance between New York City and Boston.
But do regional identities affect attitudes toward energy development? Our studies of public attitudes toward offshore wind energy development indicate they might.
Which state gets the power matters
We conducted two surveys – one in Rhode Island and the other on the New Hampshire coast – to see how people felt about offshore wind power, including energy exports.
Overall, both groups supported wind power off their shores.
People were happiest if the power was produced for their home states. That wasn’t a surprise. Studies have showed that the public generally objects to energy exports, perhaps fueled by concerns over distributive justice. Distributive justice refers to discrepancies between who bears costs, like having power plants and equipment in sight, and who benefits, such as from revenue and energy produced.
The Block Island Wind Farm’s five turbines power the island with renewable energy. The rest of the electricity goes to the mainland grid.Scott Eisen/Getty Images
The answers got more interesting when we asked about exporting power to specific states.
For people in New Hampshire, wind power projects that send power to their North Woods brethren in Maine were more palatable than projects that would connect to more urban Massachusetts.
For Rhode Islanders, a wind power project serving Massachusetts was OK, but not one serving New York. That reaction was consistent with the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, with people in Red Sox-loving Rhode Island preferring the electricity be sent to New England instead.
Our study demonstrates that not only are people less supportive of other states’ claiming electricity produced off their shores, but it also matters which state is involved. It’s important to remember that once electricity goes into the Northeast grid, power from those wind turbines could go anywhere. The power company and state that contract with a wind farm can benefit from the price and credit for contributing that clean energy, but electricity itself isn’t limited to that state, and the climate and clean energy benefits are also more global. However, perceptions of who benefits matter for public acceptance of projects.
What this means for the future
How will this regionalism play out for actual projects? We are not sure, but these are not just hypothetical situations.
The U.S. is poised for a rapid rise in offshore wind power. The Biden administration has committed enthusiastically to offshore wind development, and coastal states have already committed to generating nearly 45 gigawatts of offshore wind power. That’s close to the global total of around 57 gigawatts, and about 1,000 times the current U.S. production from its seven existing offshore wind turbines. The first large-scale project, Vineyard Wind, is under construction south of Martha’s Vineyard to ultimately provide up to 800 megawatts of electricity to its home state of Massachusetts.
The maps show areas leased for future offshore wind projects.BOEM
Offshore wind energy has faced some controversy in the U.S. An early proposed project, Cape Wind, was scuttled by two decades of litigation. Public objections often arise over potential impacts to ocean views, the fishing industry and whales and other wildlife. Concerns over distributive justice could also turn public opinion against future projects.
What to do about it
One means of addressing fairness for energy projects is by providing “community benefits” such as sharing revenues with communities affected by offshore energy projects. We believe offshore energy developers and policymakers should broaden engagement to neighboring states and communities and consider how the project might affect nearby communities.
The energy transition may also be expedited by acknowledging place-based identities and planning accordingly, downplaying rivalries. For example, the federal government could move away from naming areas of the ocean designated for offshore wind development after specific states.
David Bidwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article.
Jeremy Firestone is a former (uncompensated) Director of First State Marine Wind (FSMW), which owns a land-based wind turbine adjacent to the University of Delaware's Lewes campus. UD is the controlling owner of FSMW, with SGRE, the turbine manufacturer, owning a minority interest. Wind turbine revenues are used for research, and here provided grant funding for the Rhode Island research. Firestone has never received industry support from SGRE or any other entity.
Michael Ferguson receives funding from New Hampshire Seagrant
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string(13707) "Scientists think there are 300 million habitable planets in the Milky Way, and some may be home to intelligent life.Bruno Gilli/ESO, CC BY
If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same.
In the coming months, two teams of astronomers are going to send messages into space in an attempt to communicate with any intelligent aliens who may be out there listening.
These efforts are like building a big bonfire in the woods and hoping someone finds you. But some people question whether it is wise to do this at all.
These spacecraft – as well as their twins, Pioneer 11 and Voyager 2 – have now all left the solar system. But in the immensity of space, the odds that these or any other physical objects will be found are fantastically minuscule.
Electromagnetic radiation is a much more effective beacon.
Astronomers beamed the first radio message designed for alien ears from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. The series of 1s and 0s was designed to convey simple information about humanity and biology and was sent toward the globular cluster M13. Since M13 is 25,000 light-years away, you shouldn’t hold your breath for a reply.
In addition to these purposeful attempts at sending a message to aliens, wayward signals from television and radio broadcasts have been leaking into space for nearly a century. This ever-expanding bubble of earthly babble has already reached millions of stars. But there is a big difference between a focused blast of radio waves from a giant telescope and diffuse leakage – the weak signal from a show like “I Love Lucy” fades below the hum of radiation left over from the Big Bang soon after it leaves the solar system.
The new FAST telescope in China is the largest radio telescope ever built and will be used to send a message toward the center of the galaxy.Ou Dongqu/Xinhua via Getty Images
Sending new messages
Nearly half a century after the Arecibo message, two international teams of astronomers are planning new attempts at alien communication. One is using a giant new radio telescope, and the other is choosing a compelling new target.
One of these new messages will be sent from the world’s largest radio telescope, in China, sometime in 2023. The telescope, with a 1,640-foot (500-meter) diameter, will beam a series of radio pulses over a broad swath of sky. These on-off pulses are like the 1s and 0s of digital information.
The message is called “The Beacon in the Galaxy” and includes prime numbers and mathematical operators, the biochemistry of life, human forms, the Earth’s location and a time stamp. The team is sending the message toward a group of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 10,000 to 20,000 light-years from Earth. While this maximizes the pool of potential aliens, it means it will be tens of thousands of years before Earth may get a reply.
The other attempt is targeting only a single star, but with the potential for a much quicker reply. On Oct. 4, 2022, a team from the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in England will beam a message toward the star TRAPPIST-1. This star has seven planets, three of which are Earth-like worlds in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” – meaning they could be home to liquid and potentially life, too. TRAPPIST-1 is just 39 light-years away, so it could take as few as 78 years for intelligent life to receive the message and Earth to get the reply.
The center of the Milky Way galaxy may be home to intelligent life, but some researchers think contacting aliens is a bad idea.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI
Ethical questions
The prospect of alien contact is ripe with ethical questions, and METI is no exception.
But there is also a much deeper question. If you are lost in the woods, getting found is obviously a good thing. When it comes to whether humanity should be broadcasting a message to aliens, the answer is much less clear-cut.
Before he died, iconic physicist Stephen Hawking was outspoken about the danger of contacting aliens with superior technology. He argued that they could be malign and if given Earth’s location, might destroy humanity. Others see no extra risk, since a truly advanced civilization would already know of our existence. And there is interest. Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner has offered $1 million for the best design of a new message and an effective way to transmit it.
To date, no international regulations govern METI, so the experiments will continue, despite concerns.
For now, intelligent aliens remain in the realm of science fiction. Books like “The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu offer somber and thought-provoking perspectives on what the success of METI efforts might look like. It doesn’t end well for humanity in the books. If humans ever do make contact in real life, I hope the aliens come in peace.
Chris Impey receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
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string(11190) "Tracking changes in net wealth is one of the best ways to see who benefited from economic growth. Chris Rogers/Photodisc via Getty Images
The U.S. economy unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter, according to gross domestic product data released on April 28, 2022. While the reasons were technical and weren’t seen as signs of weakness, they add to worries that the U.S. might be headed for another recession as the Federal Reserve seeks to fight inflation by raising interest rates.
But before we fret too much about what 2022 will bring, I believe, as a financial economist who studies the decisions people and companies make with money and the resulting impacts, it’s worth reflecting on 2021, which saw the strongest economic growth in almost four decades.
GDP, which provides a snapshot of the economy by measuring the total value of all goods and services consumers produce and exchange, surged 5.7% in 2021 after accounting for inflation, the fastest pace since 1984.
So who benefited from all this growth?
Record gains in American net worth
A useful way to assess how economic growth affects individuals is by looking at personal financial wealth. This is measured by net worth, or the difference between what someone owns and owes.
In 2021, the wealthiest 1% of Americans saw their net worth grow $6.7 trillion to about $46 trillion, making up well over a third of the overall gains. Another $6.2 trillion went to the next 9%. Meanwhile, just $1.5 trillion went to the bottom 50%.
But those in the bottom half grew the fastest
The richest may have gotten the most, but the net wealth of the bottom half jumped at the fastest pace.
The bottom 50% saw their wealth grow 64% in 2021. That’s the biggest calendar-year growth of any of these groups since at least 1988, dwarfing the percentage gains of the richest.
While these changes are positive for Americans, both on average and in general, this has not changed the overall distribution of wealth that much.
The bottom half of Americans accounted for 5.5% of the country’s assets before the pandemic and at the end of 2021 owned 5.9%. Though this is the highest level since 2013, it still lags behind levels it saw during the 1990s, when the share rose to nearly 9%.
White people gained most, but still saw share fall
Similar to the income-level story, most of the gains went to white Americans, who saw their net wealth soar $14.5 trillion in 2021 to $119 trillion. Black Americans gained $1.3 trillion, and Hispanics saw growth of $683 billion.
But the percentage gains were highest for people of color – 26% for African Americans and 24% for Hispanics. That compares with 14% for white Americans.
As a result, the overall share held by white people fell to 83.6%, the lowest since at least 1988 and very likely the lowest ever. Black net wealth increased to 4.4% of the pie, the most since 1992. Hispanics held 2.5% of total U.S. net wealth.
For context, non-Hispanic white Americans make up about 60% of the population, versus 13.4% for Black Americans and 18.5% for Hispanic or Latino Americans.
Count me as one economist hoping Americans continue benefiting from improving job prospects to build wealth – even as the economic picture gets a bit cloudier.
[More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.Join the list today.]
D. Brian Blank does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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string(13945) "Nearly 1 in 5 young people worldwide intentionally injure themselves every year.xijian/E! via Getty Images
Emotions are tricky things. They allow for humans to fall in love, wage war and, as it turns out, engage in self-harm.
It is hard to imagine an era in which young adults were more distressed than today. Recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicates that more than 40% of high school students reported they felt persistently sad or hopeless over the past year. In the same survey, about 20% reported that they seriously considered suicide. Worldwide, approximately 17% of youths ages 12-18 intentionally injure themselves each year.
We are a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Washington, researching why youths and young adults self-injure, and a clinical psychologist studying young adult substance use. Our research suggests that this reduction in emotional distress following acts of self-harm and suicidal thoughts likely maintains these types of thoughts and behaviors.
Research shows that people often cut as a way to deal with strong emotions.
The challenges with studying self-harm
In his book “About Behaviorism,” the preeminent psychologist B.F. Skinner coined the term “reinforcement” to explain why behaviors are more likely to occur if that same behavior previously resulted in a desired outcome. Over the past 20 years, leading theories have hypothesized that self-injury operated in the same manner. That is, if someone experienced relief from emotional suffering after they injured themselves, they would be more likely to repeat the behavior in the future.
Self-injury is difficult to research. Until the last decade, most researchers asked people to reflect on what they were thinking or feeling when they were self-injuring, but those episodes could have been months or even years ago. We humans, though, are remarkably bad at accurately reporting on our own behaviors, especially when we try to explain why things happened. It’s especially challenging for researchers to get a clear timeline of events, which makes it difficult to pinpoint how someone was feeling immediately before or after they self-injured.
Recently, researchers have tried to fill those gaps by making use of the ubiquity of cellphones. In those studies researchers asked participants to complete brief surveys about how they’re feeling multiple times per day over their cellphones as they go about living their lives.
Our meta-analysis analyzed 38 such survey-based studies, with data contributed from researchers around the U.S. and Europe, involving 1,644 participants. In all the studies, participants rated the intensity of their emotions and indicated whether they had thought about self-injury in the past few hours.
We found that the participants reported higher levels of distress right before they self-harmed or thought about suicide, and reported significantly reduced levels of distress immediately following. Together, this suggests that relief from distressing emotion acts as a powerful reinforcer, likely increasing the probability that people continue to experience self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. It also implies that treatments should focus on how to help people replace self-injury with alternative ways of relieving stress.
Since roughly 40% of people who attempt suicide do not receive mental health services, we think it is important to share strategies for helping individuals at risk of self-harm talk about their emotions and to offer resources for finding professional help.
Family and the broader community play a role in reducing suicide risk.
It is essential that teens experiencing self-injurious thoughts and behaviors find adults and/or peers to whom they feel connected. The previously mentioned CDC survey showed that youths who felt connected were much less likely to contemplate or attempt suicide than those who did not feel connected. Thus, ensuring that teens feel cared about and supported or that they “belong” at home and school may be one way to protect against self-injury.
We’ve found in our clinical work with youths who self-injure that it’s important to balance validating their emotions – in other words, acknowledging and accurately understanding their feelings – while not responding to self-injury in ways likely to inadvertently reinforce it. If, for example, teens felt as if the only way they received support or validation were to self-harm, then it would be important to ensure that validation is provided when they are not self-harming.
Here are some key ways to validate and show support:
– Pay attention: We all know what it feels like to speak with someone who is not paying attention or is looking at their phone. Make eye contact and show you’re interested in what the person is feeling.
– Reflect back: Summarize what the person is saying to demonstrate that you are listening and taking in the information. You could say something like, “Let me make sure I understand …” and then paraphrase what you’re hearing.
– Try to read their thoughts: Imagine yourself in the person’s shoes or guess what they may be feeling, even if they haven’t said it directly. You could say something like, “I imagine you must be feeling like nobody understands what you’re going through.” If the teen says you’re wrong, give up on being right and try again later.
– Validate based on prior events: Show that you understand how the feelings make sense given what you know about the person. For example, you could ask, “Are there times when you’ve had experiences similar to now?” You could say something like, “I could totally see how you would feel afraid about failing this test, since you studied hard for the last one but didn’t do as well as you wanted.”
– Acknowledge how the feelings make sense in the present: Would other people in that exact same situation have the same feelings? For example, “Anyone would feel afraid.” This communicates to the other person that there isn’t anything wrong with the way they’re thinking and feeling. You won’t be able to validate everything; for instance, you shouldn’t validate that self-injuring is an effective response to distress. However, you can validate that self-injuring is understandable because it can provide temporary emotional relief even if it causes problems in the long run.
– Be “radically genuine”: Be authentic and try to show the other person you respect them and care about them. Treat them as a person of equal status who has important expertise about how to help solve the problem of their self-harm.
Extending a helping hand
It’s important for people to know that help is available. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255) is free for anyone experiencing emotional distress. Now Matters Now is another free resource that offers coping strategies to manage self-harm and suicidal thoughts from individuals with lived experience.
[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.Sign up today.]
Prior research has shown that certain behavioral interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy – an approach that focuses on the interplay among thoughts, emotions and behaviors – or dialectical behavioral therapy – a comprehensive treatment package that teaches mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance and interpersonal coping skills – are effective at reducing self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Both treatments are designed to provide individuals with skills for recognizing their emotions as well as changing their feelings without self-injuring.
Kevin Kuehn received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Kevin King receives funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
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string(11597) "A man identified only as Viktor shows his neighbor's grave in Bucha, Ukraine. It was too dangerous to go to the cemetery.Jana Cavojska/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Olena Koval found out that her husband was dead via text message. He was shot by Russian soldiers inside their home in Bucha while she was sheltering nearby, their neighbors told Human Rights Watch. In the days that followed, despite the brutal cold and her spinal disability, she made repeated attempts to recover his body but was turned back each time by the soldiers’ threats.
As the atrocities escalated, Olena fled Bucha to save her remaining family. Before their departure, she left a note with a neighbor that marked where her husband’s body was, hoping someone could give him a burial.
War is synonymous with death, but its emotional toll extends beyond the loss of life. The inability to say farewell to one’s loved ones and lay them to rest can often be just as painful.
Humans have always cared for their dead – so much that archaeologists often consider mortuary rites among the traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species. In other words, it is a fundamental part of being human.
Paying respect
Humans’ close relatives also showed concern for the dead. The Neanderthals practiced burials, and other extinct hominids probably did too. Even chimpanzees appear to grieve over deceased relatives. But no other species goes to such extraordinary lengths to care for its dead.
As an anthropologist, I have spent two decades studying rituals, particularly those that can seem “extreme.” At first glance, these customs seem puzzling: They appear to have no direct benefits but can feel utterly meaningful. A closer look, however, shows that these seemingly senseless acts express deeper, profoundly human needs.
Take funerary rites. There is a practical need to dispose of a dead body, but most burial customs go far beyond that requirement. Among the Toraja people of Indonesia, for example, deceased family members are kept in their homes for months or even years. During that time, their relatives treat them as if they were still living: They offer them food, change their clothes, and bring them the latest gossip. Even after their funeral, their mummified bodies are exhumed, dressed up, and paraded around town on ceremonial occasions.
The Toraja are not alone. In Madagascar, I have visited communities where people lived in fragile reed huts, at the mercy of frequent deadly cyclones, as the only robust brick-and-mortar buildings in the area were used as tombs. And in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, the architectural masterpieces carved into the rock by the Nabataeans two millennia ago were resting places for the dead.
Those practices may seem like outliers, but they are not. In all cultures, people clean, protect, embellish and carefully deposit their dead. Muslims wash and shroud the body before interring it. Hindus may bathe it with milk, honey and ghee and adorn it with flowers and essential oils before cremation. Jews keep watch over the deceased from the time of death until the burial. And many Christians hold wakes at which family members gather to pay tribute to the deceased.
Creating closure
Funerary rites are ostensibly about the dead. But their importance lies in the roles they play for the living: They allow them to grieve, seek comfort, face the reality of death and find the strength to move on. They are deeply human acts, which is why being deprived of them can feel devastating and dehumanizing.
This is what is happening in Ukraine.
In besieged cities, people cannot retrieve the bodies of their loves ones from the streets out of fear of being killed. In other cases, Ukrainian officials have accused the Russian army of burying victims in mass graves to hide war crimes. Even when they are retrieved, many of the corpses have been mutilated, making them difficult to identify. To people who have lost their loved ones, the lack of a proper send-off can feel like a second loss.
Tanya Nedashkivs'ka, 57, mourns the death of her husband at the site where he was buried in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022.AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
The need for closure is widely recognized to be indispensable – not only by anthropologists and psychologists, but also first responders, governments and international organizations. This is why armies go to great lengths to return the remains of fallen soldiers to their families, even if that takes decades.
The right to a burial is acknowledged even for one’s foes. The Geneva Convention stipulates that belligerents must ensure that the bodies of enemies are “honorably interred” and that their graves are respected and “properly maintained and marked so that they may always be found.”
Given the importance of those rites, it is also striking that the Russian defense ministry has reportedly been reluctant to bring their own dead back home, because they are concerned with covering up the scale of the losses. This seeming indifference to the suffering of Russia’s own people and their need for closure may be yet another act of dehumanization.
Dimitris Xygalatas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees. Hundreds of those refugees have now arrived at the southern border of the United States seeking asylum, after flying to Mexico on tourist visas.
At the border, Ukrainians, alongside thousands of other asylum seekers, must navigate two policies meant to keep people out. The first is the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” a U.S. government action initiated by the Trump administration in December 2018 and known informally as “Remain in Mexico.” The second is Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directive crafted in 2020, ostensibly to protect public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The directive expels all irregular immigrants (those without permanent residency or a visa in hand) and asylum seekers who try to enter the U.S. by land.
On March 11, 2022, however, the Biden administration provided guidance allowing Customs and Border Protection officers to exempt Ukrainians from Title 42 on a case-by-case basis, which has allowed many families to enter. However, this exception has not been granted to other asylum seekers, no matter what danger they are in. It is possible that the administration may lift Title 42 at the end of May 2022, but that plan has encountered fierce debates.
The different treatment of Ukrainian versus Central American, African, Haitian and other asylum seekers has promptedcriticism that the administration is enforcing immigration policies in racist ways, favoring white, European, mostly Christian refugees over other groups.
This issue is not new. As scholars of religion, race, immigration, and racial and religious politics in the United States, we study both historical and current immigration policy. We argue that U.S. refugee and asylum policy has long been racially and religiously discriminatory in practice.
Chinese asylum seekers
Race played a major role in who counted as a refugee during the early years of the Cold War. The displacement of millions fleeing communist regimes in Eastern Europe and East Asia created humanitarian crises in both places.
Under significant international pressure, Congress passed the 1953 Refugee Relief Act. According to historian Carl Bon Tempo, in the minds of President Dwight Eisenhower and most lawmakers, “refugee” meant “anticommunist European.” The text and implementation of the act reflected this. Of the 214,000 visas set aside for refugees, the law designated a quota of only 5,000 spots for Asians (2,000 for Chinese and 3,000 for “Far Eastern” refugees). Ultimately, approximately 9,000 Chinese (including 6,862 Chinese wives of U.S. citizens who came as nonquota migrants) were admitted under the 1953 refugee law, compared with nearly 200,000 southern and eastern Europeans, over the next three years.
Racial prejudice impacted the international response to refugees as well. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, United Nations officials had declared the displaced population in Europe a humanitarian crisis and appealed to the international community to relieve these pressures by accepting refugees. Over the next decade, Western nations including the U.S., France and Great Britain received millions of displaced Europeans as part of a larger Cold War public relations strategy to contain the Soviet Union and demonstrate the superiority of Western capitalist societies to life behind the Iron Curtain.
In the United States, exclusionary provisions that barred Asians from immigrating as “aliens ineligible to citizenship” would not be removed from immigration law until the 1965 Immigration Act.
Haitian refugees who were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard returning to Port-au-Prince after being repatriated in 1992.AP Photo/Daniel Morel
Between 1973 and 1991, more than 80,000 Haitians tried to seek asylum in the U.S. The U.S., however, consistently attempted to intercept and turn back boats carrying Haitian asylum seekers to avoid having to hear their cases.
In the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every single Haitian who tried to request asylum was either denied or turned away. Some disparities between asylum rates could be explained by political factors, particularly the U.S. government’s interest in prioritizing refugees from communist countries.
However, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the 11th Circuit Court bothfound, in Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti and Jean v. Nelson respectively, that racial discrimination could be the only reason for such strikingly different outcomes for Haitians. In Jean v. Nelson, the 11th Circuit heard evidence from plaintiffs that there was a less than two-in-1 billion chance that Haitians would be denied parole so consistently if immigration policies were applied in racially neutral ways. Both courts also noted the differences in outcomes of asylum claims between Cuban refugees, who were predominantly white, and Haitian refugees.
In the same time period, even while Black Haitian asylum seekers were being turned away, European immigrants, who were primarily white, received preference in the Diversity Visa system created by the Immigration Act of 1990. Northern Ireland, for example, was designated as a separate country from the United Kingdom, and 40% of “diversity transition” visas allocated during 1992 to 1994 were earmarked for Irish immigrants.
Similar accusations of racism and discriminatory treatment have surfaced over the last several months as Haitian asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border have been forced onto flights to Haiti and have faced degrading treatment.
Syrian refugees and the Muslim ban
Beginning in January 2017, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders described by many refugee advocates as the “Muslim Ban.” The ban suspended the entry of people from majority-Muslim countries, including Syrians, and limited the number of refugee admissions of several majority-Muslim countries.
Few Syrian refugees were allowed into the U.S. In this photo, Syrian refugees wait to be approved to get into Jordan.AP Photo/Raad Adayleh, File
Syrian refugees, most of whom fled the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and violence by the Islamic State, were specifically targeted in the Muslim Ban.
A February 2017 version of the Muslim Ban claimed that Syrian refugees were “detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend[ed]” from admission, with few exceptions. This contributed to a significant decrease in the number of Syrian refugees – from 12,587 to 76 between financial year 2016 to 2018.
International agreements for refugees and asylum seekers clearly state that admissions should be based on need. In principle, U.S. law says this as well. But these key moments in United States history show how race, religion and other factors play a role in determining who is in, and who is out.
While refugees from the war in Ukraine deserve support from the United States and other countries, the contrast between the treatment of different groups of refugees shows that the process of gaining refuge in the United States is still far from equitable.
Laura E. Alexander receives funding from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) as a Public Fellow.
Jane Hong receives funding from Public Religion Research Institute as a public fellow and from the Louisville Institute as the recipient of a sabbatical grant.
Karen Hooge Michalka receives funding from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) as a Public Fellow and is a board member with Bismarck Global Neighbors.
Luis A. Romero receives funding from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) as a Public Fellow.
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string(13672) "Some ancient theologians argued that the Israelites deserved a share of Egypt's wealth after being enslaved for centuries.Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Reparations to Black Americans for centuries of slavery and oppression have been discussed for a long time. But ever since journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic in 2014, the conversation has taken on a new urgency. In 2021 a House committee voted to create a commission to consider reparations.
However, debates over compensating a group of people for past injuries or abuses date back to at least the early centuries of the common era. As a professor of theology who teaches about Jewish and Christian antiquity, I have studied how the logic of reparations has roots in the Hebrew Bible and in early Christian biblical interpretation.
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies during a 2019 hearing on slavery reparations.Zach Gibson/Getty Images
Exodus from Egypt
The classic text for thinking about reparations is the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, recounted in detail in the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament.
The Israelites had been enslaved by the Egyptians and subjected to forced labor for hundreds of years. As the story goes, through divine intervention and the leadership of the prophet Moses, the people were set free and allowed to depart Egypt.
As God announces the plan in advance to Moses, he assures him:
“I will bring this people into such favor with the Egyptians that, when you go, you will not go empty-handed; each woman shall ask her neighbor and any woman living in the neighbor’s house for jewelry of silver and of gold, and clothing, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters; and so you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
When the Israelites ask as commanded, the Egyptians surprisingly comply. “And so,” the text laconically summarizes, “they plundered the Egyptians.”
Literal or allegorical plunder?
The story seems to have been a source of embarrassment to Jews and Christians in antiquity and even in more recent times.
Whether deceit was involved has been a matter of scholarly discussion, but at least one ancient historian used the account to paint the Jews of his day in a dim light. Around the turn of the millennium, Pompeius Trogus wrote that Moses led the Israelites in “carrying off by stealth the sacred utensils of the Egyptians.”
Perhaps in light of similar accusations, some Jews and, subsequently, Christians, interpreted the text as a story about symbolic and not literal plunder.
The Jewish Alexandrian philosopher Philo, an older contemporary of Jesus in the first century, interpreted the event literally and justified the Israelites’ actions.
“For what resemblance is there between forfeiture of money and deprivation of liberty,” he wrote, “for which men of sense are willing to sacrifice not only their substance but their life?”
In other words, the Israelites were in the right to take material goods from the Egyptians since the Egyptians had deprived them of the far greater good of freedom.
But in another treatise, Philo gave an allegorical interpretation in which the Egyptians’ wealth represented pagan philosophy.
He felt that ideas that might originate in “pagan” philosophy could be put to good use – or “plundered” – for Jewish purposes. By way of comparison, one might imagine a contemporary preacher using, say, insights from psychoanalysis to elucidate the meaning of a biblical passage.
Two centuries later, the Christian scholar Origen of Alexandria used a similar argument to make the case that “pagan” philosophy should be studied by Christians as the “adjunct to Christianity” – to prepare for and supplement true Christian teaching. He justifies this taking of intellectual property by using the example of the Israelites making off with the Egyptians’ possessions. He understood the biblical text’s account of the plundering of the Egyptians to be a symbolic authorization for Christians to take the intellectual property of the surrounding pagan culture.
Subsequent Christians theologians, from St. Augustine in the late fourth century onward throughout the medieval period, took up this line of interpretation.
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‘Not just a few dishes’
But Philo’s literal understanding of the passage – that the Israelites took property from the Egyptians as a form of just repayment for their enslavement – also found followers among the early Christians.
In the second century A.D., a debate raged in the Christian Church as to whether the Jewish scriptures should be authoritative for Christians. Marcion, a charismatic leader from the Black Sea region, contended that the Hebrew Bible attested an inferior god and so should be discarded. He and his followers urged that it contained morally reprehensible stories, and held up the plundering of the Egyptians as an example.
The theologians Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian of North Africa, who argued for what ultimately became the form of Christian belief backed by political authorities, however, disagreed.
Irenaeus replied to the Marcionite argument in his treatise “Against Heresies,” which contains a remarkable display of the logic of reparations.
He writes that the Egyptians held the Israelites in “abject slavery” while at the same time contemplating their “utter annihilation.” Meanwhile, the Israelites built them “fenced cities” and made them even more wealthy.
“In what way, then,” Irenaeus asks, “did the Israelites act unjustly, if out of many things they took a few?”
His argument is straightforward: The Israelites deserved to be repaid for their forced labor. They contributed to the wealth of the Egyptians, and so had a right to a share of it.
Some 25 years later, Tertullian wrote a systematic refutation of Marcion’s position, entitled “Against Marcion.” In it, he repeated some of Irenaeus’ arguments, including his case for reparations.
Tertullian imagines a court in his own day hearing the claims of “the Hebrews.” He argues that no amount of gold and silver could repay the Israelites for their hardship. “[They] were free men reduced to slavery,” he writes. “If their legal representatives were to display in court no more than their shoulders scarred with the abusive outrage of whippings, any judge would have agreed that the Hebrews must receive in recompense not just a few dishes and flagons … but the whole of those rich men’s property.”
Particularly notable is the fact that Tertullian makes the case for reparations to be paid to the descendants of the Israelites who had been forcibly enslaved centuries earlier. Although the force of the passage is driven by a debate about scriptural interpretation, its logic strikingly anticipates the case for reparations in the U.S. today.
David Lincicum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
