US election

In the days leading up to the American election, Professor Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto, reflected on the role universities can play in addressing a deeply polarized electorate.

With Americans ready to head to the polls, it was fascinating to be in Washington DC recently at the semi-annual gathering of the Association of American Universities.

Fellow presidents of America’s leading research universities (the University of Toronto is one of only two foreign members) wanted to move past the daily headlines about the U.S. election, to understand the forces that have produced a deeply polarized electorate. Discussion turned to the forces that are driving America’s current malaise, and the role that universities might play in helping address these challenges.

What are these forces? The most compelling arguments are economic.

New York Times commentator David Leonhardt, who spoke at the AAU meeting, argued that for the first time in history, many among the current generation of working-age Americans are worse off, on balance, than previous generations. The median net worth of Americans is lower than it was 30 years ago. Life spans are shorter for many groups, as obesity and other conditions have taken their toll on health. While other segments of American society may have thrived, for the first time for a significant subset of the U.S. population, life isn’t better than it used to be. The roots of Trumpism, Leonhardt explained, are to be found in the declining prosperity of some and the growing economic polarization within American society.

The solutions to this challenge are likely to be complex and difficult, particularly if they rely on redistributing income by making the income tax system more progressive or expanding social transfers. That’s why there is a unique and important role for universities to play at this moment.

First, it is now well established that the longstanding and sustained commitment to publicly funded research has created the foundations for so much of America’s post-war prosperity. The technologies embedded within the smartphone, for example, derive from decades of publicly funded research that spawned multi-touch screens, GPS, the Internet and other core technologies. Scientists working at universities did much of this fundamental research. Similar stories can be told about the science supporting medical breakthroughs or green energy technologies. At a time when the US economy is still emerging from a sustained slowdown (and when Canada is trying to figure out how to enhance prosperity and foster inclusive innovation), public expenditures on curiosity-driven research have never been more important.

Second, education is the single most important leveler of social and economic disparities within our population. By providing the tools and knowledge to function effectively in today’s working world, now more than ever education is the primary pathway to full participation in society, and the most reliable source of long-run prosperity. It is critically important, therefore, that we provide access to advanced education for all academically qualified applicants, no matter what their financial means. And our best institutions should embrace this responsibility as fully as the rest. The University of Toronto’s access policy – enacted in 1998 – has enabled tens of thousands of lower-income students to study at an institution that is consistently ranked among the top ten public universities in the world. Fully 50 per cent of our domestic undergraduates receive needs-based financial assistance – a figure that compares well to our US counterparts: UCLA is at 28 per cent, UC Berkeley at 23 per cent.

Third, the quality of our prosperity-creating research depends directly on our openness to the rest of the world. Universities need to be able to recruit the best talent – faculty and students – both locally and globally. And they need to work collaboratively with colleagues around the world, contributing to the productive circulation of ideas. At a time when America seems to be turning inward on itself and threatening to weaken its ties with its continental neighbours, the importance of openness cannot be overstated. Research universities are natural champions of this cause.

Access is not incompatible with excellence. On the contrary, access and openness enhance diversity, which accelerates the generation of new ideas, not only in research but in the kind of public policy innovation we will need in order to address pressing social problems such as inequality and polarization.

MERIC GERTLER is President of the University of Toronto

Hillary or Donald? "Let’s just hope it’s a decisive outcome," U of T experts say

lavende4 — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 14:02:02 +0000

Hillary or Donald? "Let’s just hope it’s a decisive outcome," U of T experts say

lavende4 Tue, 11/08/2016 - 09:02

Cutline

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton cookies on sale at a Pennsylvania bakery (photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Terry Lavender

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell and Terry Lavender

Topic

The long 2016 U.S. election campaign finally draws to an end as millions of Americans go to the polls today to choose their next president.

Much of the media focus has been on the bitter race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. U of T News asked U of T Scarborough political scientists Ryan Hurl and Renan Levine for their thoughts on what states to pay attention to and what happens if this ends in another disputed election.

A coin toss of an election: Ryan Hurl

It’s been a roller-coaster of a campaign. What’s your prediction?

I have no idea. I think it’s a coin toss. Four years ago, the polls were off by two to three per cent. A shift of that margin in some of the states could affect things.

I think you can rule out a Trump landslide, and you can probably rule out a Clinton landslide. As for the other possible options – a narrow Trump victory or a narrow Clinton victory – I think the most likely outcome is a relatively narrow Clinton victory based upon her taking Florida and taking almost all the other states that President Barack Obama won except Iowa.

What should Canadians be watching for tonight?

We know with a fair amount of certainty what’s going to happen in the House of Representatives. Out of 435 seats, there are really only 22 that are competitive, and so the Democrats would need a landslide election by their candidate for them to retake the House. In the Senate, the differences are much smaller, but it’s possible for the Democrats to retake the Senate. The most likely outcome is a narrow majority for either party.

In terms of what to look for at the presidential level, the path for Trump is exceedingly narrow. If he loses any one of three states – North Carolina, Florida or Ohio – I can’t see any path to victory. But there is a possibility that the polls really are missing something in terms of the number of core Trump supporters – white males lacking college education. If there’s a big shift in the voter turnout in states like Pennsylvania or Michigan, the results could be unexpected.

I don’t think that’s going to happen, but there is a small possibility.

What can we expect for the next four years if Clinton does win?

It may be the case that Clinton is going to be more effective working with Congress than Obama was. Perhaps she’ll be willing to concede more. If she only wins a narrow victory, that means she’ll have almost lost to a really weak Republican candidate, and she will be looking towards 2020 when she’ll be running against a much more competent candidate who might be raising some of the same issues that Trump was.

On the other hand, any compromise that she might make with Republicans in the House or the Senate has the potential of creating some kind of left-wing insurgency. So she’s going to be faced with a very difficult strategic position. One possibility is already in the works – Senate Democrats and Republicans are thinking about some kind of compromise on corporate tax reform and infrastructure spending, which will mean some kind of reform to the corporate tax. A lot of those in the Democratic Party’s left – the Bernie Sanders wing – will have problems with this.

Beyond that, it’s very difficult to see – particularly in terms of working with the House Republicans – any collaboration on, for example, significant immigration reform.

There are some issues that the government needs to address, particularly health care. That’s an incredibly difficult issue to deal with, precisely because some of the most heavily organized interest groups in the country, particularly retirees, don’t want to take any kind of loss in terms of health-care spending or any significant health-care reform.

If Trump doesn’t accept the results, will that have an effect on Clinton’s legitimacy?

It’s difficult to say because it remains to be seen what Trump is going to do. If the results are beyond any possible margin of fraud, then I don’t think it’ll be a problem. If we end up in a situation like the year 2000, I think there’s the potential for real trouble. Let’s just hope it’s a decisive outcome, and we know who the president’s going to be because this has been so divisive that I don’t know if the nation can take another disputed election.

Is this level of divisiveness new or has there always been this kind of polarization?

The nature of polarization is changing. If you think about what Trump has done, he’s focussed on policy areas where there’s actually a significant amount of overlap between the two parties. The main issues raised by Trump – immigration reform, foreign policy and trade – those are actually areas where there was a lot of middle ground. But it turns out that a lot of Republican voters don’t accept that middle ground. I think that the parties have become more polarized across a lot of issues. What Trump shows is that the focus of that polarization might be changing.

Why North Carolina and Nevada may be the key battlegrounds tonight: Renan Levine

If Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina will that pretty much tell us who will win the election?

Let’s put it this way: If Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina, and especially if she wins big there, you can spend the rest of the night binge-watching Netflix because the outcome will not be in doubt. If the race is too close to call, or if Donald Trump wins North Carolina, nervous Democrats and excited Republicans will have to wait for the returns from Nevada.

Why is North Carolina so important to presidential elections?

North Carolina is what’s called a purple state – it’s not clearly Democrat or Republican. That’s because of its demography, size and voting history. North Carolina was one of two states that Barack Obama won in 2008, but lost in his bid for re-election in 2012. Republican Mitt Romney beat Obama in North Carolina by only about two per cent. The only state with a narrower margin of victory was Florida.

The size of North Carolina’s population is key. It is population size that determines how many votes the state gets in the electoral college. Every state gets a minimum of three votes and then more votes are allocated based on population. The most populous state, California, has 55 votes. Traditional battlegrounds Florida and Ohio have 29 and 18 votes respectively. North Carolina, with 15 votes is a much bigger prize than other battleground states this year. New Hampshire has four, while Iowa and Nevada both have six.

Why is North Carolina usually such a close call?

The population there is a mix of African-Americans and educated whites in large urban areas – these are traditionally Democratic voters. North Carolina’s small towns tend to have conservative white constituents who tend to vote Republican. And there is a growing Latino population in the state, an important voice in this election. North Carolina will be kind of a bellwether: if Clinton does well there, she can expect to do well in other states with even larger urban areas populated by minorities and well-educated whites like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

So if Trump wins North Carolina, why does Nevada become important?

Nevada is another battleground this year. Democrats usually win Nevada when they win enough votes in Las Vegas and its surrounding suburbs to overcome Republican majorities in the rest of the state. While Las Vegas has a large Latino population, it also has an unusually large population of whites without university degrees, a demographic that is among the most receptive to Trump. So while Democrats are well-positioned, Republicans also have hope that they can do well enough in Las Vegas to win the state’s six electoral college votes.

But Nevada, as well as small states like New Hampshire and Iowa, will not matter much if North Carolina goes to the Democrats. North Carolina’s 15 electoral college votes almost entirely make up for the loss of all three of those states.

Is there a scenario where both candidates won’t get the necessary 270 seats to win the election?

Yes. It’s possible that the election won’t be decided even if Trump wins North Carolina because there is one scenario that could still keep him from getting the 270 electoral votes he’ll need to win. Evan McMullin is an independent Republican running as a third-party candidate in Utah. McMullin has strong support from fellow Mormons who distrust Trump. If McMullin ekes out a victory in Utah, he can stop Trump. So even if Trump wins everywhere else Romney won (including North Carolina) in 2012, and he gets the five “blue” states considered battlegrounds –Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Ohio – there wouldn’t be a decision in that scenario. Clinton would have 269 electoral college votes and Trump 262 in that case. If that happens, the election will be determined by the House of Representatives. That’s only happened once before, almost two hundred years ago in 1824!

Trump, filter bubbles and populism: Washington media guru explains the US election to U of T audience

lavende4 — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 20:43:21 +0000

Trump, filter bubbles and populism: Washington media guru explains the US election to U of T audience

lavende4 Thu, 09/22/2016 - 16:43

Cutline

Washington insider Marcus Brauchli tries to make sense of this year's US presidential election (Photo composite by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Global Lens

US election

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Donald Trump

John Stackhouse

No matter how hard you try, you can’t escape the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It’s everywhere – on television, in the papers, on Twitter, Facebook and countless blogs. But how do you make sense of it? Marcus Brauchli (below right), a self-styled Washington insider and former editor of the Washington Post, gave his thoughts to a rapt audience at the Munk School of Global Affairs this week in a discussion with Munk Fellow John Stackhouse, former editor of The Globe and Mail (below left). Here’s what Brauchli had to say about the presidential race, the upcoming debate, the media and, of course, Donald Trump.

Why Donald Trump is popular

There is enormous support for somebody who will go in and blow the place up. There is such deep frustration among many Americans at the dysfunction of Washington and at how Washington treats them. People are willing to take a chance on Trump. Some of his supporters acknowledge that what he’s saying isn’t true but they say he’ll get things done. He’s going to go in and change the way Washington works. Their desire for change is so deep that they’re willing to take a risk on him, notwithstanding his near complete lack of expertise in the way the government works and lack of experience in Washington.

The timing of Trump’s campaign was perfect. He uses phrases that are aimed at peoples’ anxiety and uncertainty about their economic future, and their feeling that somebody else has got something that they don’t have.

Whether the media should have treated Trump differently

I can’t imagine how the media could choose not to cover Trump. If they started pulling back dramatically, there would be all kinds of questions about why they’re making decisions about what we should be seeing in our society. I wonder how you fact -check him in real time. A big question for the moderator of the upcoming presidential debates is going to be what happens if he lies on stage. Do you call him out on it? Should you challenge Trump every time he says something?

I do think that journalists should challenge misstatements and quickly. If Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump say something that’s a lie in the debates, and right there at the bottom of the screen, it has the reality, at least some people will see it and be able to judge it.

Trump’s mental fitness to be president

He has a very belligerent hard charging, demanding way. He’ll back off if he gets what he wants, and he can be very charming and engaging if he needs something. As Clinton said, do you want somebody as president who can be baited with a tweet? I don’t think he’s capable of controlling his impulses. I worry about that a lot if he became president. I don’t think he’s got the maturity and the wisdom and the patience of somebody you want to be president.

How the media treats Hillary Clinton

Clinton gets judged by the standards of a traditional presidential candidate. The media have gone aggressively after Clinton on some issues, and she and her supporters feel that they’re being too hard and giving Trump a pass for all his egregious misstatements. But the problem with judging Trump is that he skews so many things that journalists can’t keep up. But I don’t think that it’s wrong for the media to go deep on Hillary Clinton and challenge her on all the things that she’s done because she’s as likely to become president as Trump is.

Donald Trump, Rob Ford and the rise of populism

It’s not limited to Canada and the United States. You have Vladimir Putin in Russia, who is masterful and skilled in how he deploys propaganda. Rodrigo Duterte, the new president of the Philippines, is a very scary guy who’s prone to saying whatever pops into his head. The Chinese government increasingly says things which are not consistent with the truth. I think we live in an era when governments and people in power have discovered you can say things and get a following for them, in part because you’re no longer dependent on the media as the intermediaries, because you can go directly to people.

The media and Bernie Sanders

He got a lot of attention for a long time. The media underestimated the unhappiness of voters and they didn’t appreciate how large his base was at the beginning, but they caught on and they gave him a lot of coverage. The one way the media hurt him was that the media never thought he had a chance, but that was a math thing. They counted the numbers on Bernie and they didn’t think he couldn’t get it, and they were right.

On polls and politics

Polling has a lot of challenges today. Look at the Brexit polls in the UK. There’s the mobile phone problem. It used to be you called landlines, you knew who you were calling, and you knew where they lived. Now you call a number, and you don’t know that. Maybe the person’s moved from New York to Florida so you’re getting a whole different audience.

There’s a lot of polls that they shouldn’t do, including national horserace polls. It doesn’t matter who’s up in the national polls. I guess it’s useful for scaring people in one party or another, but the polls that matter are very narrow polls. You should be polling a particular audience that has to swing Clinton’s way or Trump’s way for them to win.

The health of the mainstream media

In the last couple of years, the big media companies – who have many journalists, who have a brand that’s recognized and respected by a lot of readers – have taken back market share pretty effectively by adjusting their metabolism, by having reporters who are filing throughout the day by publishing stories as soon as they happen, and not waiting until the next day’s newspaper cycle. There has been some stabilization of the legacy media companies – the biggest ones – in the market. A lot of metro papers in the country are still struggling, and I don’t think we’re finished by any means with the shakeout in traditional media. I think there’ll be a lot more that fall by the wayside, but not the big players – especially those that have deep-pocketed parents like the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal or those that have been agile in adapting to the shifting demands of the marketplace like The New York Times, and the big television networks.

The changing nature of the media

In the past, there were three national newspapers. There were three television networks. So they all tended to provide roughly the same information, and they all clustered around the centre of the electoral spectrum.

Everybody was operating off the same set of facts. The nature of media has changed profoundly and people don’t draw distinctions among different sources of content. The media ranges from legacy mainstream media to more opinion driven media, to attack media to bloggers to people who make a living on social media. So today, voters are operating off different sets of facts.

Social media has made it possible for us to live in communities of people who think the same way we do – the filter bubble. Facebook’s algorithms are designed to find content that you like, and if you previously liked a certain kind of content, it feeds you more of that content. People can feel that they’re getting a rich diet of information, but the information can all be coming from one narrow perspective. And anything that doesn’t align with their perspective seems somehow wrong. The result is that people trust only a few places.

I don’t know what this means for democracy, but I think somehow it needs addressing.

Nostalgia for old media

People want to bring back the media to the way it was, but we’re in a different world now. The biggest worry I have is not about media or journalism. Nobody is going to suffer from lack of information. They may suffer from lack of objective information because they live in a filter bubble.

I worry about what happens to democracy when everybody is specialized. We all used to read a veneer of news on different subjects because that’s what newspapers used to offer. Now we all read vertically. I read lots about economics and politics but not about other subjects. What happens in a democracy when people don’t all have the same information? They may be deeply informed on one subject but not informed on other subjects.