Ideas

How women are changing the world of transportation

Do you want to go on a bike ride?

A simple question with what might seem like a simple answer, especially as spring weather begins to waft across the country.

Dig a little deeper, and it gets more complicated. Your decision to ride a bike is likely informed not just by the temperature and your energy level – but also by your gender, and the influence of a burgeoning movement that’s transforming streets across America.

It’s a movement led in large part by an emerging community of female transportation planners – many of whom have marshaled research that illuminates realities like the biking gender gap (there’s one woman for every three men riding a bike in the U.S.) and America’s dangerous roads to make the case for a radical change in how we think about getting from here to there.

For decades, planners designed streets, and our transportation systems, in ways that inadvertently sacrificed safety to focus on driver freedom. They focused on how to reduce congestion for commuters, often neglecting to think about the population outside of the 9-to-five workforce. The results of this strategy: infrastructure built less for peoples’ holistic needs, and more for vehicles.

“In the past five to ten years, there’s been a big shift in the way we think about designing communities and neighborhoods for bicycling and walking,” said Seleta Reynolds, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation at New America’s annual conference. “When you look at the leadership in the traffic safety movement, there are lots of women doing transformative things because they may see transportation from a different angle or lens.”

In many ways, Reynolds said, women are “changing the rulebook for how we design streets, and how we entice more women and families out to use them in a different way.”

Many of these rulebook changes originate with New York City’s Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the Department of Transportation from 2007-2013. She pioneered a street design plan that focused on the city’s most vulnerable travelers – and is known as a visionary in the transportation planning industry, even if she wasn’t always a popular one.

Around that time, groundbreaking research came out showing that women and casual bicyclists prefer quieter, slower streets and more separated paths. That research combined with the success of Sadik-Khan’s reforms inspired the construction of hundreds of bike lanes across the U.S. “What Janette did was to create kind of environment where women, children and older adults would feel more comfortable getting on a bike and would feel measurably safer walking,” Reynolds explained.

The push to focus on women and vulnerable populations extends beyond the streets to the Department of Transportation’s Job Access Reverse Commute Program (JARC), which is committed to strengthening transit connections in nontraditional commuting routes and times, typically traveled by women and lower-income communities trying to get to jobs or child care centers that are often located outside of conventional routes. The idea is to make sure that people who work a late shift, or do the reverse commute from city to suburbs, have reliable, affordable transit. In theory, a great program. In practice, says – Robin Hutcheson, the director of the Transportation Planning Division of Salt Lake City, JARC funding can be difficult to come by and “doesn’t always help us as a city do what we need to do.”

Both Reynolds and Hutcheson believe there may be a new role for government to play in increasing access for low-income communities as transportation and commuting shifts to a service-based model – in other words, people ditching their cars to rely more on driverless vehicles, Uber, Lyft, Bridge or car share to get around. Bike sharing and car sharing are not used as much in lower-income neighborhoods, she explained, due to both financial and cultural barriers. To Reynolds, the government could help encourage the shift away from individual car ownership towards a more sustainable model by subsidizing these services for lower-income populations.

Philadelphia’s new bike sharing program, which has focused on bringing the service to low-income neighborhoods, is one new example of how to get lower-income Americans on bikes. The program removes financial barriers by allowing patrons to pay with cash in addition to credit cards.

But the push for more bike-friendly communities hasn’t always been a walk – or a ride – in the park. For instance, in order to boost numbers of female bike riders, transportation planners have learned that it’s important to create a more substantial separation between bikers and traffic. “When there is nothing between you and moving traffic except a four-inch white stripe, you’re not going to put your kid on a bike, nor are you going to go out on a bike,” Reynolds said. But if you build a physical curb, or even flip flop parked cars with bike lanes on the road, more women will pedal.

But “to give space to something, you have to take it from something else,” Reynolds said, acknowledging that we’re no longer in the business of widening our roads. Another example of these tradeoffs: Vision Zero – a traffic safety project with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries. It began in Sweden and has spread globally, with leadership efforts from both men and women. To reduce traffic deaths under Vision Zero, “I have to get everyone to slow down…and people across any discipline don’t do well when it comes to change,” Reynolds said, explaining that speed is a key indicator in how destructive a traffic incident will be. In other words, “saving lives comes at a cost.”

And then there’s the matter of culture change – teaching people to both approach and talk about driving in a different way. One critical pathway to this kind of change, Reynolds noted at the conference, is starting to talk about safety outcomes not as “accidents,” as if they couldn’t have been prevented, but “crashes,” where someone was responsible, and should be accountable for the consequences.

The idea that we all need to slow down is something that parents who witness near-crashes every day near their kids’ schools understand intuitively. But in many cases, that macro-level understanding hasn’t translated into micro-level behavioral change.

Not yet, at least. “When I was growing up, you didn’t wear seatbelts,” she recalled. Today, we may be buckling up more, but in the traffic safety space, there’s still “a real fundamental culture change we have to get to.” Reynolds, however, is optimistic: “I don’t think it’s out of our reach.”

Culture change, however, often requires leadership change. And diversifying the transportation C-Suite may be one of the biggest remaining challenges – as it is for other male-dominated industries.

“It’s one of my biggest frustrations, that I feel like more women are coming into transportation and are succeeding at the low level management and mid-level management, but then the doors still seem closed,” said Swaim-Staley. “We have fewer female DOT secretaries now than we had a few years ago. I see a glass ceiling more than I did when I started out.”

That may be more true in state government than in city government, Hutcheson pointed out. Salt Lake City, she noted, has more than a dozen women in leadership positions. And Hutcheson herself is an example of how even one woman in a leadership role can have a multiplier effect; Janette Sadik-Khan was an inspiration to Hutcheson as she rose into transportation industry leadership.

“Janette showed me – and many of us – what was possible,” Hutcheson said.

Elizabeth Weingarten is the Deputy Director of New America’s Breadwinning & Caregiving Program, and of the Global Gender Parity Initiative. This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, The Weekly Wonk. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox each Thursday here, and follow @New America on Twitter.

Many who voted “yes” on gay marriage did so because of their faith—not in spite of it

Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism.

Professors, administrators and education innovators describe what an ideal American university would look like

Higher education in America could be headed for rock bottom. Tuition has continued to rise at a steady pace, and years of deep cuts in state funding have forced colleges and universities to absorb many of the costs. As for the well-documented burden of student loan debt in the U.S.—well, even Taylor Swift can’t possibly pay off the entirety of what so many young graduates owe.

Going beyond crisis-intervention mode, however, educators and administrators are also tasked with a more complex set of challenges—bigger questions about how to direct young minds in the face of rapidly advancing technology, an increasingly global economy, and a shift in marketable skills in the wake of a major recession.

In advance of the Zócalo event, “How Do We Fix American Universities?”, we asked scholars: What does the ideal 21st century American university look like?

Mark Bauerlein — The antidote to youth culture—a moral obligation to be intelligent

I don’t know what the ideal school looks like, but I can tell you about the ideal experience for a student in his first two years of college.

The student takes a broad range of courses and becomes immersed in great books and artworks, important historical events, profound religious convictions, and basic scientific knowledge. No pop culture, no topical current events, and no political correctness or identity politics.

The student studies 25 hours per week, limits email and text messages, and frequently leaves the iPhone and tablet at home. He spends two hours each week talking to professors in office hours. During those four years, the student finds his taste in entertainment changes, his desire to communicate with peers lessens, and his sense of time and space expands.

He will learn the necessity of arduous and solitary mental labor. He will learn to be alone. His speech will improve—no more “like” and “awesome” and “stuff” in his sentences—and his knowledge of history, politics, philosophy, art, religion, and science deepen.

After those two years of intellectual challenge and growth, the student selects a major and begins to adopt career expectations. These formative semesters will serve as the antidote to youth culture—“the moral obligation to be intelligent,” as eminent 20^th century writer and critic Lionel Trilling put it.

These academic rigors create a counter-culture: anti-adolescent, anti-consumerist, anti-utilitarian. College should reject the currently popular urge to be up-to-date and socially conscious. Relevance should be expelled. We want the first two years of college to be a reprieve from the rush of social media and the pressures of the 21st century. Let’s give American youths some time to reflect and ponder and listen and see, within a space shielded from all the concrete demands that will hit them as soon as they graduate.

Mark Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University. He is the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30.

Veronica I. Arreola — Future leaders need liberal arts more than ever

Our higher education system is having a moment. We need it more than ever, yet it is becoming more and more out-of-reach for middle and working-class families. The ideal 21^st century American university is one that not only welcomes students of all classes, but also provides financial support.

In order to reach that goal, we must get out from under the weight of student loan debt. This pushes students and their families to question the need for a well-rounded liberal arts education and value only courses that will lead to “real jobs.” Too many people believe there is no need to know how to read and analyze a book or to ponder philosophy or understand how gender and race impact our interactions.

As our economy becomes more globalized, our future leaders need a liberal arts education more than ever. They will need to understand the people they are working with and for. An engineer in Miami will need to know how to relate to her coworkers in India. An accountant in Chicago will need to know what motivates his boss in Hong Kong.

As our economy continues to move towards a knowledge economy, we will need great thinkers, not just great doers. We need economists who consider the human impact of their decisions, not just the numbers on the page. We need computer scientists who keep in mind the privacy issues of their algorithms, and not just what they can build.

And this can only happen if we return to supporting our state and land-grant institutions with our tax dollars. We also must increase support for low-income and first-generation college students. The affordability of our universities is connected to our ability to develop the kind of thinkers who will propel the U.S. to great heights while keeping us grounded in our humanity.

Veronica I. Arreola is the assistant director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Research on Women and Gender and directs its Women in Science and Engineering program.

Richard DeMillo — Ingenuity and diversity will decide who survives

The rapid growth and diffusion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), learning analytics and adaptive learning platforms has convinced many that higher education is undergoing revolutionary change.

Some have speculated that the old, familiar institutions will be swept away as bigger and better institutions claim a greater stake. Some have even suggested that the very idea of college is doomed. But this is unlikely.

What is likely is that colleges will fail, evolve, or prosper according to the inexorable laws of Web commerce. After all, higher education in the U.S. is comprised of a decentralized system of largely autonomous entities, and the Internet has become a necessary organizing tool for how they run as businesses.

In the same way that Google, Amazon, and Facebook dominate the online consumer market, higher education will increasingly become dominated by a relatively few institutions—ones with the scale and brand to serve large numbers of students.

But as student populations shift, some colleges will also adapt to become smaller and more specialized, serving the so-called “long tail” of a marketplace that demands diversity: not only of content, but pricing, credentialing, and scheduling.

A possible model for this is the Online Masters of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. It’s a MOOC-based degree program of 2,300 students who pay less than $7,000, which coexists with a traditional Master of Science program of 200 residential students, some of whom pay more than $40,000 for the same degree.

Every student satisfies the same entrance requirements and the degrees themselves are indistinguishable. The University of Illinois has just announced a similar MOOC-based MBA program for one-third the price of their traditional degree.

No industry has ever withstood the kind of change we’re seeing now due to an onrush of new technology. The only lesson we can draw from history is that ingenuity and diversity determine who survives and prospers. One thing is clear to me: the future of college is not a cookie-cutter world of ideal institutions.

Richard DeMillo is the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren professor of computing and a professor of management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities and author of Revolution in Higher Education: How a Small Band of Innovators Will Make College Accessible and Affordable.

David Hoffman — Take action, and leave the ivory tower stereotype behind

This is certainly a difficult moment of reckoning for American higher education, but also one of great energy and potential—many universities, including the one I work for, have become hubs for discourse and action around today’s most pressing problems.

Two weeks ago, hundreds of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, students, faculty and staff gathered on campus to discuss the ongoing protests that followed Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Engaged scholars contributed insights about the origins of Baltimore’s complex social and economic inequalities. Students shared stories of frustration, as well as their deep commitment to working for a better future.

During the event, UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, observed that a university’s value lies in its ability to help caring people think critically together about the challenges we face.

Two aspects of that powerful campus-wide conversation were vital. First, its focus was on deploying knowledge to support action that could produce tangible improvements in people’s lives. This is a notable departure from the caricature of higher education as an isolated and inward-looking ivory tower. Aside from its positive community impacts, a focus on deep engagement and learning-by-doing corresponds with improved academic outcomes for students.

Second, and most importantly, the tone and dynamics of the conversation reflected an appreciation for the value of all participants’ stories and their capacity to make meaningful contributions to our collective well-being. That spirit of mutual respect and creativity belies the dichotomies common to conventional thinking about higher education: distinctions between teacher and learner, scholar and citizen, research and action, university and community.

Similar ideas and practices are emerging through higher education networks like Imagining America and the American Democracy Project, and in publications like Democracy’s Education: Public Work, Citizenship & the Future of Colleges and Universities. They embody a vision for 21st-century university education that is both enriching for students and deeply relevant to everyday life.

David Hoffman is assistant director of student life for civic agency at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an architect of UMBC’s BreakingGround civic initiative.

Claire E. Sterk — Ignite passion for research—and allow for failure

Here is a recipe for the ideal university, in nine easy-to-follow steps:

1. Start with an emphasis on diversity that not only reflects the world’s changing demographics, but also brings wide-ranging perspectives to solve its most challenging problems.

2. Add a heaping helping of innovation in teaching to take students beyond typical classroom approaches and immerse them in learning from teachers and each other, in order to shape them into critical thinkers.

3. Bring thoughtful use of technology to instruction by engaging “digital native” students with the newest tools, from creative formats for testing to online instruction for select basic-level coursework.

4. Sprinkle the academy with a liberal education that leads to lifelong learners who have broad analytical and communications toolkits at the ready, not only for their first career but also for their entire lives.

5. Stir in one cup of the nature of evidence to ignite a passion for research from within and across disciplines.

6. Whip up data from benchmark institutions and internal assessments to calibrate the process and demonstrate value through quantifiable measurements.

7. Mix well and let the batter settle—but not for long. Nimbleness and adaptability are crucial ingredients to this recipe. Test the temperature often, evaluate the product, adjust the ingredients, and repeat the process.

8. Allow for failure from which comes true advancement.

9. The final and most important ingredient is empowering the university community of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors to work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world.

Claire E. Sterk is provost, executive vice president for academic affairs, and Charles Howard Candler professor of public health at Emory University in Atlanta.

Steven W. Anderson — What I wish for my daughters’ future

I remember the first computer I ever owned. It was 1998, and I was a freshman at Western Carolina University (where I would go on to earn a degree in education in 2003). This was the first time ever that I had enjoyed access to a high-speed Internet connection.

Fast-forward almost two decades, to the year 2015, and look how far we’ve come. We can plug in from anywhere in the world, gaining access to just about anything we’d want to know. This rapid shift in capability has forced a change in the way we go about higher education.

Forcing young people to sit in large lecture halls crammed with 300 peers while someone bores them to death with PowerPoint slides does a disservice to today’s students. It robs them of existing opportunities to go further with learning.

For my young daughters, ages six and one, I hope that in the years to come we see major leaps in the way that institutions of higher learning structure their lesson plans around technology.

An ideal, modern, American university needs to embrace the “anywhere, anytime” learning model and get students more involved. Professors and teachers need to focus less on the “stand and deliver” methods of teaching and allow students to solve problems that provide meaning to their learning and allow them to work in situations of learning where they can collaborate with others around the globe. Traditional, front-of-classroom, hands-off learning is not what modern employers need or want. That may have worked in the Industrial Age, but it certainly won’t in the Digital Age and beyond.

Steven W. Anderson is a learning and relationship evangelist who works with educators across the globe to help them discover the power that technology has in learning. On Twitter, as @web20classroom, he promotes the use of social media for learning, reflecting and growing.

Jonathan Kroll — Outside environments don’t matter—it’s what happens in students’ minds

Universities take on many forms. There are the traditional brick-and-mortar campuses, the online spaces that may have thousands of students in a course—or the hybrid, which might utilize hotel conference rooms, as well as homegrown electronic hubs.

More important than the appearance of the physical environment, though, is the reality of the learning that is taking place within it.

The learning relationships cultivated in college can often become rooted less in learning than in putting on programs (for instance, in the residence halls), winning competitions (for instance, athletics), or reactively navigating cultures of hazing (for instance, fraternities and sororities).

Rather than engaging students with reflective queries for hands-on learning, we mindlessly dictate to them what they should be learning or doing. Not only does this method weaken students’ potential to absorb knowledge, it also limits their development as people.

21^st-century universities will become ideal learning centers—places where students acquire the knowledge and skills for technical competencies, enhance their leadership capacity, and advance along the developmental spectrum—when a holistic focus is enacted, not just espoused.

So how do we create this kind of environment? As educators, we need to consciously relinquish control and provide opportunities for students to wrestle with important questions. An initial set of questions should assist students in thinking through how they might apply their technical knowledge and skills. And another layer of engagement should challenge students with questions of significance and depth: What lights your fire or quenches your thirst? Where is home? When do you feel most alive? What will you accomplish next?

Questions can provoke deep thinking—a critical tool in the developmental process. Let our next interactions with students include reflective questions and the space to ponder responses.

Jonathan Kroll earned a doctorate in human and organizational systems from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara. He is co-founder of The Institute for Leadership and Training, which focuses on preparing college athletes for optimal performance in competition, leadership, and life.

This article was written for Zocalo Public Square.

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• In terms of what we desire throughout the average day we wish for coffee slightly less than sex and a bit more than alcohol. Regular drinkers don’t really get a boost from coffee, they just get their fix. In fact when you haven’t had your coffee everything with caffeine tastes better. The strategic use of coffee can make you more persuasive. The smell of coffee actually makes people nicer to one another.

• The smell of coffee makes women more likely to give out their phone number. Anything that gets the adrenaline flowing increases sexual arousal so coffee and a roller coaster might be an excellent date idea. When things get stressful coffee is a good idea for women but not for men. Coffee has also been shown toreduce depression in women. Pregnant women definitely should not drink it. (Alcohol — in modest amounts — during pregnancy can actually be a good thing.)

• Coffee and cigarettes make you smarter but lung cancer sucks so better stick to coffee and donuts, another combo which boosts brainpower. The caffeine and glucose one-two punch can work in many forms, actually: Red Bull boosts cognitive performance too. Just looking at Red Bull can be an enhancer.

• Coffee helped produce some of the great works of literature: ask Balzac. Then again, if you want to be creative maybe you don’t need more coffee: you’re more creative when you’re exhausted. Or maybe you want to drink something else: you’re more creative when you’re drunk too. (Adding Red Bull to Vodka doesn’t make you function better but it will make you think you do.) To make sure you’re productive after a nap drink a cup of coffee right before laying down. (Caffeine takes about 20-30 minutes to kick in.) This is your brain on coffee.

• Most importantly, what’s the best way to use caffeine? Got you covered: a neuroscientist gives you all the details you need.

Join over 180,000 readers and get my free weekly email update here.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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James Dale, the plaintiff in the 2000 Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, now works at a strategic advertising agency in San Francisco.

The proposal to end the ban against gay leaders leaves the door open for individual troops to do the wrong thing

I’m inspired by the remarks Thursday from Boy Scouts of America President Robert Gates calling for an end to the group’s ban on gay adult leaders. His comments go far. Do they go far enough? No.

The changes Gates proposed would need to be approved at the group’s annual meeting. Even if put into effect, they leave the door open for individual troops to do the wrong thing. That’s not the right approach.

I think it’s high time the Boy Scouts get back to the business of preparing kids for the world out there, building communities, and doing the good things they have the potential to do, instead of the bad things they’ve been doing for so long—teaching inequality as an American value. I feel a bit once bitten, twice shy by this news. I’ve been calling for the Boy Scouts to change their policies for 25 years now, when I was expelled from the organization for being gay.

Boy Scouts meant a lot to me when I was young. When I was 17 and an Eagle Scout, they told me I was everything that a Boy Scout should be. Then when I was 18, and I came out as gay, and they discovered who I was as a person, then suddenly I wasn’t good enough.

Everything I was taught in the Boy Scouts growing up seemed to contrast with how they treated me. They represented themselves as an open and accepting organization, teaching young boys that they should be proud of who they are and where they come from, and what makes them different and unique. I believed in that organization and the things they had taught me when I was younger, the positive attributes and qualities that they inspired in so many Americans, and the potential for good that they had. I challenged the policy in the New Jersey Supreme Court and won, but when the Boy Scouts appealed to the Supreme Court in 2000, I ultimately lost in a deeply dived 5-4 ruling.

It wasn’t until 2013 that the group decided to end its ban on gay children as members, but still continued its ban on gay adult leaders. This initiative was wrong in many ways: It was great that they weren’t excluding young members, but it was wrong to tell someone that you can be gay when you’re a child, but you’re immoral as an adult. That’s a horrifyingly destructive and damaging thing to say to anyone, especially a young person.

They changed the policy because they couldn’t get away with standing against young people anymore. Throwing out a 25-year-old man is very different than throwing out a 13-year-old kid. What we’ve seen over the years is that children are coming out younger and younger. Society and America are more welcoming for young gay people.

But the Boy Scouts are still behind the times. They had an opportunity to be ahead of America, to do the right thing, and not waste years expelling children, losing money, and reinventing themselves as an anti-gay organization. Now, the Supreme Court is considering marriage equality. The majority of Americans is behind fairness, and looks very likely that the high court will do the right thing.

Hopefully the Boy Scouts can do some soul searching and see who they are, and who they want to be, letting go of the bigotry that they’ve embraced far too long. The Boy Scouts have the power to stop the damage done to its reputation and the integrity of the organization, and the very real-world damage they continue to do by embracing discriminatory policies. Hopefully they’ll make these changes and more to be certain the organization doesn’t become completely irrelevant. To paraphrase Dr. Gates, the status quo in the Boy Scouts of America can no longer be sustained. To which I’d add, these policies are damaging too many young lives.

TIME columnist Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time NBA champion and league Most Valuable Player. He is also a celebrated author, filmmaker and education ambassador.

We can’t let our passion for revenge override our communities’ best interest

The death penalty is suddenly trending again. On Wednesday, Nebraska lawmakers voted to repeal the state’s death penalty. Last week, the jury in the Boston Marathon bombing case decided that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be executed. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently reviewing the constitutionality of lethal injection in the death-penalty case Glossip v. Gross. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Justice Department admitted that almost every examiner in the FBI microscopic hair forensic unit overstated matches in favor of the prosecution in 95% of the cases in which they testified over the past 20 years. (This included 32 defendants sentenced to death, 14 of which have been executed or died in prison.) Norman Fletcher, the former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court who during his tenure upheld numerous death sentences, announced last week that the death penalty is “morally indefensible,” makes no business sense, and is inconsistent and applied unfairly.

Recent polls indicate that the death penalty’s popularity is sinking with Titanic-like inevitability. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that public support for the death penalty is at a near-historic low, with only 56% supporting it. A poll by ABC News and the Washington Post found that 52% of Americans preferred life without parole as the main punishment, and 42% preferred the death penalty, down from 80% in 1994.

Traditional reasons to support the death penalty are going the same way as conventional wisdom for denying same-sex marriage and gender equality. Some will talk about how justice demands the death penalty, and some will say that the only way to enforce the sanctity of human life is by executing those who recklessly and arrogantly take it away. Some will argue that it protects innocent lives, others that it brings closure to victims’ families. Some will offer personal tales of loss. These are all heartfelt points, but ultimately they are simply wrong in terms of doing what is best for society.

The primary purpose of the death penalty is to protect the innocent. Theoretically, if someone deliberately murders someone else, executing that person protects the rest of us by removing him from society, never again to be a threat. But, as always, there’s a big difference between theory and practice. While it’s true that the death penalty may protect us from the few individuals it does execute, it does not come without a significant financial and social price tag that may put us all at an even greater risk.

First, there’s the financial cost. Every society is on a limited budget, and the recent economic recession has forced government on every level to tighten its belts like an 18th century corset. Studies show that the death penalty is more expensive than the alternative, life without parole. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the average cost of a death penalty case is $1.26 million, compared to $740,000 for a life-without-parole case. In addition, keeping a prisoner on death row costs $90,000 more a year than keeping a prisoner in the general prison population. California alone has spent $4 billion on maintaining the death penalty since its reinstatement in 1978.

In the states that have abolished the death penalty in the last decade, politicians from both parties have cited cost as the main reason. This isn’t a matter of morality versus dollars. It’s about the morality of saving the most lives with what we have to spend. Money instead could be going to trauma centers, hospital personnel, police, and firefighters, and education.

Some will ask, “How can you put a price on justice?” and “What if it were your mother or son who’d been murdered?” Fair enough. But given the current cost of the death penalty, my family is much more at risk from not having enough police on the street, firefighters in their stations, and staff in hospitals. The question every concerned taxpayer needs to ask is whether or not we should be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on executing prisoners when life without parole keeps the public just as safe but at a fraction of the cost. The money saved won’t solve all our financial woes, but it will solve some—and could save lives doing so.

Some will argue that this cost dilemma can be resolved by shortening trials and appeals and just getting on with the putting the condemned to death. Unfortunately, in a system that already convicts hundreds of innocent people, removing legal safeguards only ensures more mistakes. Plus, these legal safeguards are guaranteed by the Constitution. We can’t wave the flag and brag about American exceptionalism through individual rights, then turn around and want to strip away those rights in the name of expediency.

The second major problem with the death penalty is that there’s a high probability that we execute innocent people. The traditional test of a person’s philosophy about justice is a simple question: If you had 10 people sentenced to death but you knew one was innocent, would you keep them all in prison for life with the hopes that the innocent person will be discovered and released? Or would you execute all of them with the idea that the occasional innocent person is an acceptable loss for a greater good? If you answer that you’d keep them in prison, you’re against the death penalty.

Recent studies suggest that this theoretical test is more of a reality than most of us realized. A study, “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that about 1 in every 25 of people sentenced to death are innocent. Since 1973, 143 death row inmates have been exonerated—fewer than half the number who actually may have been innocent, according to this calculation.

The third problem with the death penalty is that the system is biased based on race and economic standing. Minorities have Favorite Son status when it comes to being executed. According to a study by law professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth, a black defendant is four times more likely to receive a death sentence than a white defendant for a similar crime. Part of the reason for this may be that those most responsible for determining which cases to pursue are white. Nearly 98% of chief district attorneys in counties using the death penalty are white; about 1% are African American. This bias was also apparent in the case of disgraced Chicago police commander Jon Burge, who, along with a group of other officers known as the “midnight crew,” allegedly tortured more than 100 young black men with beatings, suffocation, electrocution, and more in order to extract confessions.

The other key factor is the race of the victim. A black defendant is often more likely to get the death sentence if the victim is white. Between 1976 and 2014, Florida executed 84 people, but none of the condemned were white people who had killed an African American. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, no white person has ever been executed in Florida for killing a black person. In Alabama, only 6% of murders are blacks killing whites, yet 60% of blacks on death row involved a white victim. In Louisiana, if the murder victim is white, the state is 97% more likely to seek the death penalty. Since 1976, 269 African Americans have been executed when the victim was white, while only 20 whites have been executed when the victim was black. This lack of fair application is why some opponents of the death penalty consider it unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

Another unfair application is the lack of adequate representation received by poor defendants. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg addressed this issue: “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.” Although poor defendants are guaranteed representation, they aren’t guaranteed the best representation. This is evident when we examine the records of some these court-appointed attorneys: Nearly 1 in 4 death row inmates were represented by court-appointed attorneys who were disciplined for professional misconduct during their careers. A report by the Texas Defender Service concluded that death row inmates have a 1 in 3 chance of being executed “without having the case properly investigated by a competent attorney and without having any claims of innocence or unfairness presented or heard.” The attorneys for one-fifth of the death row inmates in Washington state over the last 20 years were disbarred, suspended, or arrested. This list of incompetent representation goes on.

Glenn Ford is an example of all these faults of the death penalty system converging in a perfect storm of injustice. In March of this year, Ford was declared innocent and released after serving 30 years on Louisiana’s death row. Had he been executed at any time during those 30 years, his innocence would never have been revealed. At the time of his arrest for the murder of a white woman, Ford was black, poor, and innocent. His lead attorney was a specialist in law relating to gas and oil exploration and had never tried a case before a jury. The all-white jury who convicted him did so based on eyewitness and expert testimony. Unfortunately, the eyewitness was the girlfriend of another man accused of the crime who later admitted she lied to the court. The three “experts” were later proven to have given evidence that was either inconclusive or just plain wrong. The former prosecutor of the case, A.M. Stroud III, in a letter of apology, said, “This case is another example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty. I now realize, all too painfully, that as a young 33-year-old prosecutor, I was not capable of making a decision that could have led to the killing of another human being.”

Supporters of the death penalty may say it deters other would-be murderers, but 2009 study in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology states that “the consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment.” Some argue that it brings closure for families of victims. In some cases it does; in others it doesn’t. That’s why there are various organizations—California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights—made up of family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty.

Our laws are not based on what will or will not bring closure, but on what is just. Those who claim that the death penalty is necessary to promote the sanctity of life are caught in a spiral of circular logic. Certainly, there’s no proof that the sanctity of life is less in Great Britain, France, Spain, or any of the 140 countries who banned the death penalty.

Some people deserve to die. They commit acts so brutal that they cannot ever be a part of society. But we can’t let our passion for revenge override our communities’ best interest. The death penalty is an elaborate Rube Goldberg device with a thousand moving parts, each one expensive and in serious disrepair, to achieve a dubious end. With something as irrevocable as death, we can’t have one system of justice for the privileged few and another for the rest of the country. That, more than anything, diminishes the sanctity of human life.

Yes, there are many ways the death penalty system might someday be improved so that it will cost less, not risk innocent lives, and be fairly applied to all. Until that day, life without parole will bring us justice and allow us the opportunity to correct our mistakes before it’s too late.

Shane Parrish writes Farnam Street

"A victory achieved after lifelong work and effort is better than one achieved more quickly"

Van Gogh didn’t become popular until shortly after his death. To this day it’s unclear whether his letters drove the initial interest in his art.

The anthology Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, contains 265 of Vincent van Gogh’s letters, which is nearly a third of all the surviving letters he penned.

On the third of April, 1878, in a noteworthy letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh sheds light on his intentions about how to live.

I’ve been thinking about what we discussed, and I couldn’t help thinking of the words ‘we are today what we were yesterday’. This isn’t to say that one must stand still and ought not try to develop oneself, on the contrary, there are compelling reasons to do and think so.

But in order to remain faithful to those words one may not retreat and, once one has started to see things with a clear and trusting eye, one ought not to abandon or deviate from that.

[…]

As far as being an homme intérieur et spirituel is concerned, couldn’t one develop that in oneself through knowledge of history in general and of certain people of all eras in particular, from biblical times to the Revolution and from The Odyssey to the books of Dickens and Michelet? And couldn’t one learn something from the work of the likes of Rembrandt or from Weeds by Breton, or The four times of the day by Millet, or Saying grace by Degroux, or Brion, or The conscript by Degroux (or else by Conscience), or his Apothecary, or The large oaks by Dupré, or even the mills and sand flats by Michel?

It’s by persevering in those ideas and things that one at last becomes thoroughly leavened with a good leaven, that of sorrowful yet always rejoicing, and which will become apparent when the time of fruitfulness is come in our lives, the fruitfulness of good works.

The ray from on high doesn’t always shine on us, and is sometimes behind the clouds, and without that light a person cannot live and is worth nothing and can do nothing good, and anyone who maintains that one can live without faith in that higher light and doesn’t worry about attaining it will end up being disappointed.

Vincent believed that one must pay the price to achieve the kind of success that was deserved — “that a victory achieved after lifelong work and effort is better than one achieved more quickly.”

He who lives uprightly and experiences true difficulty and disappointment and is nonetheless undefeated by it is worth more than someone who prospers and knows nothing but relative good fortune.

[…]

Do let us go on quietly, examining all things and holding fast to that which is good, and trying always to learn more that is useful, and gaining more experience.

Woe-spiritedness is quite a good thing to have, if only one writes it as two words, woe is in all people, everyone has reason enough for it, but one must also have spirit, the more the better, and it is good to be someone who never despairs.

Living means we will inevitably experience sorrow and disappointment.

If we but try to live uprightly, then we shall be all right, even though we shall inevitably experience true sorrow and genuine disappointments, and also probably make real mistakes and do wrong things, but it’s certainly true that it is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious. It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done.

[…]

If one were to say but few words, though ones with meaning, one would do better than to say many that were only empty sounds, and just as easy to utter as they were of little use.

Love is the best and most noble thing in the human heart, especially when it has been tried and tested in life like gold in the fire, happy is he and strong in himself who has loved much and, even if he has wavered and doubted, has kept that divine fire and has returned to that which was in the beginning and shall never die. If only one continues to love faithfully that which is verily worthy of love, and does not squander his love on truly trivial and insignificant and faint-hearted things, then one will gradually become more enlightened and stronger.

The sooner one seeks to become competent in a certain position and in a certain profession, and adopts a fairly independent way of thinking and acting, and the more one observes fixed rules, the stronger one’s character becomes, and yet that doesn’t mean that one has to become narrow-minded.

It is wise to do that, for life is but short and time passes quickly. If one is competent in one thing and understands one thing well, one gains at the same time insight into and knowledge of many other things into the bargain.

It’s sometimes good to go about much in the world and to be among people, and at times one is actually obliged and called upon to do so, or it can be one way of ‘throwing oneself into one’s work unreservedly and with all one’s might’, but he who actually goes quietly about his work, alone, preferring to have but very few friends, goes the most safely among people and in the world. One should never trust it when one is without difficulties or some worry or obstacle, and one shouldn’t make things too easy for oneself. Even in the most cultured circles and the best surroundings and circumstances, one should retain something of the original nature of a Robinson Crusoe or a savage, for otherwise one hath not root in himself, and never let the fire in his soul go out but keep it going, there will always be a time when it will come in useful.

We must launch out into the great sea of life.

Launching out into the deep is what we too must do if we want to catch anything, and if it sometimes happens that we have to work the whole night and catch nothing, then it is good not to give up after all but to let down the nets again at dawn.

So let us simply go on quietly, each his own way, always following the light ‘sursum corda’, and as such who know that we are what others are and that others are what we are, and that it is good to have love one to another namely of the best kind, that believeth all things and hopeth all things, endureth all things and never faileth.

And not troubling ourselves too much if we have shortcomings, for he who has none has a shortcoming nonetheless, namely that he has none, and he who thinks he is perfectly wise would do well to start over from the beginning and become a fool.

We are today what we were yesterday, namely ‘honnêtes hommes’, but ones who must be tried with the fire of life to be innerly strengthened and confirmed in that which they are by nature through the grace of God.

Ever Yours: The Essential Letters is a collection of some of Vincent van Gogh’s best letters which shed light on a remarkable talent and his artistic notions.

This piece originally appeared on Farnam Street.

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Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

“Explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition.”

Break down proper technique, quickly correct errors and get them to repeat until it’s second nature.

Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How:

Gallimore and Tharp recorded and coded 2,326 discrete acts of teaching. Of them, a mere 6.9 percent were compliments. Only 6.6 percent were expressions of displeasure. But 75 percent were pure information: what to do, how to do it, when to intensify an activity. One of Wooden’s most frequent forms of teaching was a three-part instruction where he modeled the right way to do something, showed the incorrect way, and then remodeled the right way, a sequence that appeared in Gallimore and Tharp’s notes as M +, M −, M +; it happened so often they named it a “Wooden.” As Gallimore and Tharp wrote, Wooden’s “demonstrations rarely take longer than three seconds, but are of such clarity that they leave an image in memory much like a textbook sketch.”

And…

Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How:

His skill resided in the Gatling-gun rattle of targeted information he fired at his players. This, not that. Here, not there. His words and gestures served as short, sharp impulses that showed his players the correct way to do something. He was seeing and fixing errors.

And…

Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How:

He taught in chunks, using what he called the “whole-part method”— he would teach players an entire move, then break it down to work on its elemental actions. He formulated laws of learning (which might be retitled laws of myelin): explanation, demonstration, imitation, correction, and repetition. “Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens— and when it happens, it lasts,” he wrote in The Wisdom of Wooden. “The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated,” he said in You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned, authored by Gallimore and former Wooden player Swen Nater. “Repetition is the key to learning.” Most people regard Wooden’s success as a product of his humble, thoughtful, inspiring character. But Gallimore and Tharp showed that his success was a result less of his character than of his error-centered, well-planned, information-rich practices.

And these techniques don’t just work with sports.

Via The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How:

“We started approaching the school with the idea of, what would John Wooden do?” Slowly, steadily, KEEP began to take off. Reading scores rose, comprehension improved, and the school, which had previously lagged far behind national averages in standardized test scores, was soon exceeding them by a healthy margin. In 1993 Gallimore and Tharp’s KEEP project received the Grawemeyer Award, one of education’s highest honors…

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This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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Jay Barbieri is the author of Biker's Handbook: Becoming Part of the Motorcycle Culture and the former host of the television show, American Thunder and Two Wheel Thunder.

Don't condemn the entire American motorcycle sub culture based on one event

As an avid motorcycle enthusiast, I’d like to clear up some misconceptions about bikers following the biker “gang” shooting in Texas. While there are certain groups that operate as criminal organizations, it’s wrong to form a negative view of the entire sub culture.

First, I would like to clarify that the word “gang” is not applicable in the biker culture, but rather groups are called “motorcycle clubs,” hence the MC patch worn by members on their jacket or vest. The reason is a historical one: Motorcycle clubs were started shortly after World War II by returning vets who purchased surplus motorcycles from the military at a discounted price. These guys had similar experiences: They had been in the war, purchased motorcycles, and found it hard to adjust to civilian life, many of them suffering from post-traumatic-stress disorder. They formed motorcycle clubs as places where they could gather and feel comfortable.

But one incident in Hollister, California, in July 1947 helped give the culture its negative image. Reports of riots by bikers were sensationalized in the press, and a photo of a drunken man sitting on a motorcycle surrounded by beer bottles was featured in Life magazine. This image left an indelible mark on the general public. It’s human nature to romanticize about any group of people who live on the fringe or outside the law. It’s no different than the dime-store novels that sensationalized bank robbers and outlaws of the Wild West. The outlaw image makes for a good story.

Yes, there are motorcycle club members who live completely outside the law and march to their own drum. However, you can apply that to any group or organization. There is no doubt that bikers clad in black leather, rumbling down the road on loud motorcycles stand out in a crowd, and that makes them an easy target to be perceived as “bad” or “scary.” This perception is enforced by the media.

But the reality is that motorcycle clubs can range from police motorcycle enthusiasts to Christian biker organizations, all of whom have a similar appearance when riding—black leather being dominate. A quick piece of history about black leather and bikers: From the beginning, motorcycles have been notorious for spraying oil, so wearing black leather not only protects the rider but also hides the oil stains.

A lot of motorcycle clubs are about charity and brotherhood. They organize events such as “Toy Run,” when bikers collect toys for children in need for Christmas, or fundraisers for noble causes, such as the Wounded Warrior Program and the 911 Foundation, to name a few. Furthermore, I would guess that many motorists have experienced some kind of assistance when in trouble on the side of the road from a “big, scary” biker.

Take away the motorcycles from the event that occurred in Texas, and you have, unfortunately, just another piece of tragic news. Add in the element of motorcycles, and you get a sensationalized story that fuels the imagination.

Bikers are not going to change their appearance or way of life. It’s part of the freedom we enjoy and fight for in our country every day. People who generalize about our culture would be doing everyone a favor by looking at motorcycle-related incidents, good and bad, individually, before condemning the entire American motorcycle sub culture.