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Markets and the Hidden Superpower of Online Education

Can online education be good education? If you ask most economists, you’ll probably get their favorite answer: it depends. To figure it out, they’ll tell you, you need to know whether the move to online has expanded or contracted the set of tools…

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Can online education be good education? If you ask most economists, you’ll probably get their favorite answer: it depends. To figure it out, they’ll tell you, you need to know whether the move to online has expanded or contracted the set of tools available to educators.

Most economists probably think about education the way I used to think about education: as another kind of exchange between a producer and a consumer. We may be a bit vague about what’s being exchanged, but whatever it is we’re the producers. And like all producers we’re trying to solve a constrained optimization problem. If teaching online means that teachers have a restricted set of opportunities—if we have fewer tools in our toolbox—then it can’t be as good as more traditional options. If online education expands our choice set, it can’t hurt and may make us better. (Of course, there’s always the worry that more choices could confuse the problem and lead to worse outcomes, but let’s set that aside.)

I’ve been teaching some of my classes online for over a year. Since the pandemic began my University, like most others, has been experimenting with a bewildering mix of new ways to teach. I have plenty of reservations about online/hybrid classes, but after having taught them I no longer think that the model of education as a production process is a good way to figure out whether it will make education better.

I still think economics can help us understand the consequences of going online. I just think we need a different model. We shouldn’t think about education as a kind of bilateral exchange. Education is a complex multilateral social interaction. Whether it’s teaching your kid how to scramble eggs or teaching a PhD student nuances of Austrian economics, all education is an attempt by humans with different specialized skills to cooperate so as to achieve some mutually beneficial outcomes. In other words, education is an economic activity. But it’s not as simple as the model of bilateral exchange suggests.

Start thinking along these lines and you’ll see that online education has the potential to inject something helpful into this complex social process. I’ll start by explaining what this is, and then I’ll give a few examples of how it might help. I’ll also consider why, if online education really can be a powerful force for good, it took a pandemic to expand its use. I’ll end on a guardedly pessimistic note, speculating on where and why this could all go wrong.

The Hidden Superpower of Online Education

Let’s begin—as we so often should—with first principles as described by Ronald Coase. In his classic paper, “The Nature of the Firm,”1 Coase emphasizes that enjoying the benefits of specialization requires coordination and control. This can happen with some sort of hierarchical system—“as department chair, I order you to teach the 8:00 am section of micro.” “Coordination also sometimes relies on markets generating meaningful price signals—“if you teach the 8:00 am section, we’ll pay you for the overload.” And coordination can also be facilitated by bonds of mutual respect and affection, usually found within a small, cohesive group—“my friend, Professor Dad, has to drop his kids off at 8:00 am and so I’ll take the early section”). Every productive institution from Fortune 500 corporations to messianic cults struggles to find the right mix of the three. Educational organizations are no different.

The thing is, though, educational institutions tend to make less use of markets than most other institutions.

For some sorts of education this makes sense. Five-year olds, for example, are strange, idiosyncratic creatures. A properly educated child must master a complex set of intellectual and social skills. Competitive markets might generate informative price signals about a few things (“Goldfish are cheaper than Pirate’s Booty and so let’s have that for a snack”). But it’s hard to imagine how many of the really important questions involving the allocation of resources could be directed by market prices. (“Dani had trouble with her best friend today. Would you like to pay for an extra 10 minutes in the Calming Corner?”) However, smaller communities of people with shared values might be very good at sorting through all of this. It’s no surprise that Grandparent’s Day at a kindergarten feels very different from a trip to Walmart.

Other kinds of education, though, aren’t nearly as tricky and so might benefit from a greater reliance on markets. To appreciate how markets might help, consider the work of economist Robin Hogarth.2 In his view education prepares people to make better decisions under uncertainty.3 Hogarth’s model distinguishes between the learning environment and the target environment. In the learning environment educators provide resources and then confront students with various challenges. The student’s reaction to the challenges is correlated with a reward—score 70 or higher on the driver’s exam and you will get a license. The student moves from this setting to the target environment—aka, the real world—where the student must make appropriate choices. The higher the correlation between success in the learning environment and success in the target environment, the better the education.

A learning environment is “kind” when it is possible to design lessons that, if mastered, are highly correlated with the correct choices. For example, in flight simulator training a pilot learns that if a particular warning goes off, it is imperative to decide on a very specific set of actions. If that warning goes off while on an actual flight, a good pilot will decide to follow the training, almost always leading to the best outcome4.

In wicked learning environments it is especially difficult to devise lessons that correlate with the correct choices. This could be because the choices themselves are fraught with deep uncertainty—they’re what David Epstein and others have described as wicked problems. Or it could be because it is difficult to design lessons where success in the learning environment correlates with success in the target environment. For example, almost all business schools teach “business ethics”, but it’s not at all clear that this leads to more ethical choices. This could be because deep uncertainty makes understanding the ethical consequences of business decisions difficult. Or it could be that the correct ethical choices are obvious but earning an “A” in business ethics doesn’t correlate with doing the right thing.

Especially in wicked learning environments, educators require nearly constant feedback. First, they need to understand the target environment they’re training for—if the goal is to make good decisions when doing business in China, then lessons in Mandarin are better than lessons in Latin. Second, educators need feedback about how closely success in the lesson environment correlates to success in the target environment—if the Mandarin listening quiz is read by a professional actor, it may not help on the streets of Beijing.

The need for feedback is not unique to education. Any system of coordination—whether hierarchical, communal, or market directed—requires that information be shared among all the specialized agents involved. In both hierarchical and communal structures. This typically happens through direct, face-to-face interaction—the Department Chair schedules a faculty meeting, the parent notices that the kid never eats her peas, and so forth. But online learning exists because direct interactions are very expensive. If online education is to work at all, it must rely heavily on market signals.

“If educators want to depend more on online education, they will have to pay more attention to market signals.”

And that, I think, may be online education’s hidden superpower. If educators want to depend more on online education, they will have to pay more attention to market signals.

Where More Reliance on Markets Will Help

One obvious constituency affected by the move online are those who use education as a signal. This includes graduate schools recruiting students and, most importantly, future employers5. It’s worth asking, then, whether online education can be an alternate means of signaling, perhaps even freeing scarce resources to serve other ends.

I don’t see why not.

Remember, employers and graduate schools use academic achievement as a signal of some unmeasurable characteristics, usually a particular sort of intelligence and self-discipline. The signal works for two reasons. First, the signal is correlated with those characteristics. Second, it is less expensive for people who possess those characteristics to send the signal than it is for people who lack those attributes. A law school, for example, needs students capable of abstract verbal reasoning. Someone who has or can learn those skills will have a much easier time earning, say, a degree in philosophy from Notre Dame than would someone whose talents lie elsewhere. Educators who love their subjects are loath to admit this, but in many cases the signal is valuable, independent of the value of the education. Understanding Thomas Aquinas doesn’t help understand antitrust law but a demonstrated ability to read Summa Theologica may signal the ability to critically evaluate US v Von’s Grocery.

But generating such signals can be terribly expensive—a philosophy degree from Notre Dame comes with a price tag of over $200,000. Could success in at least some online Coursera-like philosophy courses designed by Notre Dame’s best faculty provide as useful a signal?

I have no idea. Neither, I suspect, does the faculty of Notre Dame. But students who want to generate a valuable signal and law schools who want to identify the best students have every incentive to find out. Online education is a market place generating information about what kinds of signals work best.

A second area where more market based direction might make things better is in education intended to influence values. This notion of values education seems to have become conflated with indoctrination, a pejorative word that implies coercion. But we’re social animals. We need certain values in order to get along. We’re also self-aware, reasoning animals. This means we can shape our own values.

Education has always been part of this process of socialization and personal transformation. Religious education of children is intended to instill spiritual values, so many parents seek religious education for their kids. Education in the arts is intended to shape aesthetic values, so many people seek arts education as a means of reshaping their values to have a richer artistic experience.

But who decides what values to teach?

Here I can only reveal my own view, a view shaped by a strong bias towards individualism. I think that individuals have the self-knowledge to help them understand what values will best contribute to their own flourishing.6 It may not be simple and many mistakes will be made, but I think I’m in the best position to choose the values taught to my kid. I think I’m in the best position to seek educational experiences that will reshape my values. I think you are too.

Given this starting point, you can see why I am a big fan of relying more on markets in education. Market decisions are individual decisions. The information that comes from markets is information about what individuals want. If the move online coincides with a greater reliance on markets, values education may better reflect the desires of individuals to select the kinds of values they wish to explore and perhaps embrace.

Recently the California State University system implemented a requirement that all students complete at least one course in “ethnic and social justice studies.” Can there be any doubt that the courses are intended to change student’s values? Many of the courses will be taught by proponents of “critical race theory” and a few will be taught by self-described Marxists.7 When my young daughter goes to college, I’d probably encourage her to take one of those courses. I might have benefited from one of those courses when I was in college.

But the decision to add that requirement was made by a hierarchical university system that depends on feedback from the California political system. The decision may, by happy coincidence, be the kind of values education that the targeted students and their sponsors want, but without market feedback, how certain can we be of that?

And it does no good here to respond—as I’m sure many educators will—that the requirement is necessary because students don’t know what they need to know. Of course, it’s true that students need expert educators to help design their curriculum. That’s no different than saying sick people need experts to design their treatments. But medical experts and patients largely agree on the goal of the treatments—doctors don’t need an elaborate feedback mechanism to know that the patient wants to feel better.

That’s not true about values. Different people will seek to move their lives in different directions. Some students may wish to become more sensitive to the plight of minorities. Other students may wish to become more sensitive to the differences between rap and hip-hop. Many students may say that they don’t quite know in what direction they want to be steered, but they trust a particular group of expert educators to help them figure that out. My contention, though, is that educators should respect individual autonomy in setting the curriculum for values education. Relying exclusively on hierarchical structures responsive to political calculations just can’t do that as well as markets.

Why Did We Wait for a Pandemic?

If, as I’ve argued here, greater reliance on market forces can make education better, then why did it take a pandemic and the forced march online to move us in that direction? If there are $100 bills on the sidewalk, why hasn’t someone picked them up?

I think the answer is both obvious and unpleasant to discuss. Creating a hierarchy necessarily creates powerful incentives to resist change. Coase teaches us that to understand economic institutions we should pay close attention to transaction costs. But we should also remember that one person’s cost is another person’s income. The administrators, faculty, and politicians who advanced the Cal State mandate for social justice education don’t work for free. Their income and status derive from having the power to control curriculum. Allowing more market direction threatens that sinecure and so they will—as all of us are wont to do—defend their turf.

In summary then, I think that for a very long time educational institutions have made too little use of markets and prices to help direct resources to their highest and best use. The pandemic has forced schools to make greater use of online learning and to rely more on markets. Online classes can only get better as we gain experience. But even if some online classes never overcome their inherent constraints, the movement to online can be a force for good.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I worry most about whether the educational establishment is ready—either temperamentally or institutionally—to more fully participate in a market based system.

Consider what happened in the aftermath of the collapse of the former Soviet Union. I don’t mean to suggest a direct analogy—the typical university is not nearly as inefficient and corrupt as the Communist USSR. But the former Soviet Union and the modern western university have one thing in common: the absence of clear and transferable property rights. And without clear property rights, markets are prone to all sorts of failures.

Successful educational institutions have a valuable set of tangible and intangible assets. But these assets are not “owned” in any meaningful economic sense. Most importantly there are very limited pecuniary incentives to preserve the reputational capital that is usually the most important portion of an institution’s value. If the owners of a private business produce a shoddy product they may gain a short term profit, but by damaging the firm’s reputation they reduce the market value of their firm. If a university’s administrators roll out an inferior online program, they may earn short term revenues but may not personally suffer much of a long term loss. The President of my university seems like a good guy but he doesn’t plan on funding his retirement by selling his shares of the University’s stock.8 I wish he did.

Even before the pandemic a number of small private colleges were in a weak financial position. Some of these schools will not survive.9 What’s been remarkable is that even the most celebrated universities—schools with multi-billion dollar endowments and ultra-selective admissions—feel deeply threatened. Nothing so concentrates the mind as the sight of the gallows. I don’t know if these schools will sacrifice the future for the present. But I know they have little pecuniary incentive not to do so.

I don’t want to overstate the case for online education. I can imagine its possibilities to reshape education but having been on the frontlines I’ve also seen how bad it can be. The pandemic, though, is revealing new choices for education. Sure, we need to think about how to make our Zoom classes better. But more importantly we need to think about how this pandemic, for all its horrors, is giving us thousands of experiments that can help us reshape a sclerotic, inefficient system.


Footnotes

[1] Coase, Ronald H. (1937), “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4 (November): 386-405.

[2] Hogarth, R. M. (2001). Educating intuition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

[3] This view is best understood as describing practical, vocational education but in fact does not exclude any target environment. Modern popular music, for example, is a target environment characterized by a few brilliant compositions offered up next to the tedious and banal. A class in the history of pop culture can help the interested student make better choices about what pop stars deserve attention.

[4] To say that the environment is kind does not mean the lessons are simple or the problem isn’t complex. It just means that a student who masters the lessons will usually make correct decisions. Chess students are trained to quickly recognize patterns. This is fiendishly complicated because of the enormous number of possible patterns, but Grand Masters who have mastered the skill dominate the chess board.

[5] If you have any doubts about the importance of educational achievement as a signal, I can only recommend Bryan Caplan’s recent book The Case Against Education.

[6] When I talk about “choosing” values I’m revealing the biases of a classically trained economist. For an introduction to the complexities of the problem check out the recent EconTalk podcasts with Agnes Callard on aspiration.

[7] If I taught in the system, I’d propose a course based on readings from Thomas Sowell, Gary Becker, and Martin Luther King. And who knows, it might even be approved.

[8] It would be helpful if the small army of academics who claim that business suffers from “short-termism” could acknowledge that incentives within their own institutions are much more likely produce the very result they disparage.

[9] “Why The Coronavirus Will Kill 500-1,000 Colleges,” by Richard Vedder. Forbes, Apr. 7, 2020.


* Michael L. Davis is a senior lecturer in business economics at the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.

For more articles by Michael L. Davis, see the Archive.


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President Biden Delivers The “Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President”

President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through…

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President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through the State of The Union, President Biden can go back to his crypt now.

Whatever 'they' gave Biden, every American man, woman, and the other should be allowed to take it - though it seems the cocktail brings out 'dark Brandon'?

Tl;dw: Biden's Speech tonight ...

  • Fund Ukraine.

  • Trump is threat to democracy and America itself.

  • Abortion is good.

  • American Economy is stronger than ever.

  • Inflation wasn't Biden's fault.

  • Illegals are Americans too.

  • Republicans are responsible for the border crisis.

  • Trump is bad.

  • Biden stands with trans-children.

  • J6 was the worst insurrection since the Civil War.

(h/t @TCDMS99)

Tucker Carlson's response sums it all up perfectly:

"that was possibly the darkest, most un-American speech given by an American president. It wasn't a speech, it was a rant..."

Carlson continued: "The true measure of a nation's greatness lies within its capacity to control borders, yet Bid refuses to do it."

"In a fair election, Joe Biden cannot win"

And concluded:

“There was not a meaningful word for the entire duration about the things that actually matter to people who live here.”

Victor Davis Hanson added some excellent color, but this was probably the best line on Biden:

"he doesn't care... he lives in an alternative reality."

*  *  *

Watch SOTU Live here...

*   *   *

Mises' Connor O'Keeffe, warns: "Be on the Lookout for These Lies in Biden's State of the Union Address." 

On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden is set to give his third State of the Union address. The political press has been buzzing with speculation over what the president will say. That speculation, however, is focused more on how Biden will perform, and which issues he will prioritize. Much of the speech is expected to be familiar.

The story Biden will tell about what he has done as president and where the country finds itself as a result will be the same dishonest story he's been telling since at least the summer.

He'll cite government statistics to say the economy is growing, unemployment is low, and inflation is down.

Something that has been frustrating Biden, his team, and his allies in the media is that the American people do not feel as economically well off as the official data says they are. Despite what the White House and establishment-friendly journalists say, the problem lies with the data, not the American people's ability to perceive their own well-being.

As I wrote back in January, the reason for the discrepancy is the lack of distinction made between private economic activity and government spending in the most frequently cited economic indicators. There is an important difference between the two:

  • Government, unlike any other entity in the economy, can simply take money and resources from others to spend on things and hire people. Whether or not the spending brings people value is irrelevant

  • It's the private sector that's responsible for producing goods and services that actually meet people's needs and wants. So, the private components of the economy have the most significant effect on people's economic well-being.

Recently, government spending and hiring has accounted for a larger than normal share of both economic activity and employment. This means the government is propping up these traditional measures, making the economy appear better than it actually is. Also, many of the jobs Biden and his allies take credit for creating will quickly go away once it becomes clear that consumers don't actually want whatever the government encouraged these companies to produce.

On top of all that, the administration is dealing with the consequences of their chosen inflation rhetoric.

Since its peak in the summer of 2022, the president's team has talked about inflation "coming back down," which can easily give the impression that it's prices that will eventually come back down.

But that's not what that phrase means. It would be more honest to say that price increases are slowing down.

Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the cost of living will not return to prepandemic levels, and they're not happy about it.

The president has made some clumsy attempts at damage control, such as a Super Bowl Sunday video attacking food companies for "shrinkflation"—selling smaller portions at the same price instead of simply raising prices.

In his speech Thursday, Biden is expected to play up his desire to crack down on the "corporate greed" he's blaming for high prices.

In the name of "bringing down costs for Americans," the administration wants to implement targeted price ceilings - something anyone who has taken even a single economics class could tell you does more harm than good. Biden would never place the blame for the dramatic price increases we've experienced during his term where it actually belongs—on all the government spending that he and President Donald Trump oversaw during the pandemic, funded by the creation of $6 trillion out of thin air - because that kind of spending is precisely what he hopes to kick back up in a second term.

If reelected, the president wants to "revive" parts of his so-called Build Back Better agenda, which he tried and failed to pass in his first year. That would bring a significant expansion of domestic spending. And Biden remains committed to the idea that Americans must be forced to continue funding the war in Ukraine. That's another topic Biden is expected to highlight in the State of the Union, likely accompanied by the lie that Ukraine spending is good for the American economy. It isn't.

It's not possible to predict all the ways President Biden will exaggerate, mislead, and outright lie in his speech on Thursday. But we can be sure of two things. The "state of the Union" is not as strong as Biden will say it is. And his policy ambitions risk making it much worse.

*  *  *

The American people will be tuning in on their smartphones, laptops, and televisions on Thursday evening to see if 'sloppy joe' 81-year-old President Joe Biden can coherently put together more than two sentences (even with a teleprompter) as he gives his third State of the Union in front of a divided Congress. 

President Biden will speak on various topics to convince voters why he shouldn't be sent to a retirement home.

According to CNN sources, here are some of the topics Biden will discuss tonight:

  • Economic issues: Biden and his team have been drafting a speech heavy on economic populism, aides said, with calls for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy – an attempt to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans and their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

  • Health care expenses: Biden will also push for lowering health care costs and discuss his efforts to go after drug manufacturers to lower the cost of prescription medications — all issues his advisers believe can help buoy what have been sagging economic approval ratings.

  • Israel's war with Hamas: Also looming large over Biden's primetime address is the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has consumed much of the president's time and attention over the past few months. The president's top national security advisers have been working around the clock to try to finalize a ceasefire-hostages release deal by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins next week.

  • An argument for reelection: Aides view Thursday's speech as a critical opportunity for the president to tout his accomplishments in office and lay out his plans for another four years in the nation's top job. Even though viewership has declined over the years, the yearly speech reliably draws tens of millions of households.

Sources provided more color on Biden's SOTU address: 

The speech is expected to be heavy on economic populism. The president will talk about raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. He'll highlight efforts to cut costs for the American people, including pushing Congress to help make prescription drugs more affordable.

Biden will talk about the need to preserve democracy and freedom, a cornerstone of his re-election bid. That includes protecting and bolstering reproductive rights, an issue Democrats believe will energize voters in November. Biden is also expected to promote his unity agenda, a key feature of each of his addresses to Congress while in office.

Biden is also expected to give remarks on border security while the invasion of illegals has become one of the most heated topics among American voters. A majority of voters are frustrated with radical progressives in the White House facilitating the illegal migrant invasion. 

It is probable that the president will attribute the failure of the Senate border bill to the Republicans, a claim many voters view as unfounded. This is because the White House has the option to issue an executive order to restore border security, yet opts not to do so

Maybe this is why? 

While Biden addresses the nation, the Biden administration will be armed with a social media team to pump propaganda to at least 100 million Americans. 

"The White House hosted about 70 creators, digital publishers, and influencers across three separate events" on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official told CNN. 

Not a very capable social media team... 

The administration's move to ramp up social media operations comes as users on X are mostly free from government censorship with Elon Musk at the helm. This infuriates Democrats, who can no longer censor their political enemies on X. 

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers tell Axios that the president's SOTU performance will be critical as he tries to dispel voter concerns about his elderly age. The address reached as many as 27 million people in 2023. 

"We are all nervous," said one House Democrat, citing concerns about the president's "ability to speak without blowing things."

The SOTU address comes as Biden's polling data is in the dumps

BetOnline has created several money-making opportunities for gamblers tonight, such as betting on what word Biden mentions the most. 

As well as...

We will update you when Tucker Carlson's live feed of SOTU is published. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/08/2024 - 07:44

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What is intersectionality and why does it make feminism more effective?

The social categories that we belong to shape our understanding of the world in different ways.

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The way we talk about society and the people and structures in it is constantly changing. One term you may come across this International Women’s Day is “intersectionality”. And specifically, the concept of “intersectional feminism”.

Intersectionality refers to the fact that everyone is part of multiple social categories. These include gender, social class, sexuality, (dis)ability and racialisation (when people are divided into “racial” groups often based on skin colour or features).

These categories are not independent of each other, they intersect. This looks different for every person. For example, a black woman without a disability will have a different experience of society than a white woman without a disability – or a black woman with a disability.

An intersectional approach makes social policy more inclusive and just. Its value was evident in research during the pandemic, when it became clear that women from various groups, those who worked in caring jobs and who lived in crowded circumstances were much more likely to die from COVID.

A long-fought battle

American civil rights leader and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw first introduced the term intersectionality in a 1989 paper. She argued that focusing on a single form of oppression (such as gender or race) perpetuated discrimination against black women, who are simultaneously subjected to both racism and sexism.

Crenshaw gave a name to ways of thinking and theorising that black and Latina feminists, as well as working-class and lesbian feminists, had argued for decades. The Combahee River Collective of black lesbians was groundbreaking in this work.

They called for strategic alliances with black men to oppose racism, white women to oppose sexism and lesbians to oppose homophobia. This was an example of how an intersectional understanding of identity and social power relations can create more opportunities for action.

These ideas have, through political struggle, come to be accepted in feminist thinking and women’s studies scholarship. An increasing number of feminists now use the term “intersectional feminism”.

The term has moved from academia to feminist activist and social justice circles and beyond in recent years. Its popularity and widespread use means it is subjected to much scrutiny and debate about how and when it should be employed. For example, some argue that it should always include attention to racism and racialisation.

Recognising more issues makes feminism more effective

In writing about intersectionality, Crenshaw argued that singular approaches to social categories made black women’s oppression invisible. Many black feminists have pointed out that white feminists frequently overlook how racial categories shape different women’s experiences.

One example is hair discrimination. It is only in the 2020s that many organisations in South Africa, the UK and US have recognised that it is discriminatory to regulate black women’s hairstyles in ways that render their natural hair unacceptable.

This is an intersectional approach. White women and most black men do not face the same discrimination and pressures to straighten their hair.

View from behind of a young, black woman speaking to female colleagues in an office
Intersectionality can lead to more inclusive organisations, activism and social movements. Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

“Abortion on demand” in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK and USA took no account of the fact that black women in these and many other countries needed to campaign against being given abortions against their will. The fight for reproductive justice does not look the same for all women.

Similarly, the experiences of working-class women have frequently been rendered invisible in white, middle class feminist campaigns and writings. Intersectionality means that these issues are recognised and fought for in an inclusive and more powerful way.

In the 35 years since Crenshaw coined the term, feminist scholars have analysed how women are positioned in society, for example, as black, working-class, lesbian or colonial subjects. Intersectionality reminds us that fruitful discussions about discrimination and justice must acknowledge how these different categories affect each other and their associated power relations.

This does not mean that research and policy cannot focus predominantly on one social category, such as race, gender or social class. But it does mean that we cannot, and should not, understand those categories in isolation of each other.

Ann Phoenix 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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Biden defends immigration policy during State of the Union, blaming Republicans in Congress for refusing to act

A rising number of Americans say that immigration is the country’s biggest problem. Biden called for Congress to pass a bipartisan border and immigration…

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President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address on March 7, 2024. Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images

President Joe Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, casting a wide net on a range of major themes – the economy, abortion rights, threats to democracy, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine – that are preoccupying many Americans heading into the November presidential election.

The president also addressed massive increases in immigration at the southern border and the political battle in Congress over how to manage it. “We can fight about the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it,” Biden said.

But while Biden stressed that he wants to overcome political division and take action on immigration and the border, he cautioned that he will not “demonize immigrants,” as he said his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, does.

“I will not separate families. I will not ban people from America because of their faith,” Biden said.

Biden’s speech comes as a rising number of American voters say that immigration is the country’s biggest problem.

Immigration law scholar Jean Lantz Reisz answers four questions about why immigration has become a top issue for Americans, and the limits of presidential power when it comes to immigration and border security.

President Joe Biden stands surrounded by people in formal clothing and smiles. One man holds a cell phone camera close up to his face.
President Joe Biden arrives to deliver the State of the Union address at the US Capitol on March 7, 2024. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

1. What is driving all of the attention and concern immigration is receiving?

The unprecedented number of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border right now has drawn national concern to the U.S. immigration system and the president’s enforcement policies at the border.

Border security has always been part of the immigration debate about how to stop unlawful immigration.

But in this election, the immigration debate is also fueled by images of large groups of migrants crossing a river and crawling through barbed wire fences. There is also news of standoffs between Texas law enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol agents and cities like New York and Chicago struggling to handle the influx of arriving migrants.

Republicans blame Biden for not taking action on what they say is an “invasion” at the U.S. border. Democrats blame Republicans for refusing to pass laws that would give the president the power to stop the flow of migration at the border.

2. Are Biden’s immigration policies effective?

Confusion about immigration laws may be the reason people believe that Biden is not implementing effective policies at the border.

The U.S. passed a law in 1952 that gives any person arriving at the border or inside the U.S. the right to apply for asylum and the right to legally stay in the country, even if that person crossed the border illegally. That law has not changed.

Courts struck down many of former President Donald Trump’s policies that tried to limit immigration. Trump was able to lawfully deport migrants at the border without processing their asylum claims during the COVID-19 pandemic under a public health law called Title 42. Biden continued that policy until the legal justification for Title 42 – meaning the public health emergency – ended in 2023.

Republicans falsely attribute the surge in undocumented migration to the U.S. over the past three years to something they call Biden’s “open border” policy. There is no such policy.

Multiple factors are driving increased migration to the U.S.

More people are leaving dangerous or difficult situations in their countries, and some people have waited to migrate until after the COVID-19 pandemic ended. People who smuggle migrants are also spreading misinformation to migrants about the ability to enter and stay in the U.S.

Joe Biden wears a black blazer and a black hat as he stands next to a bald white man wearing a green uniform and a white truck that says 'Border Patrol' in green
President Joe Biden walks with Jason Owens, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, as he visits the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 29, 2024. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

3. How much power does the president have over immigration?

The president’s power regarding immigration is limited to enforcing existing immigration laws. But the president has broad authority over how to enforce those laws.

For example, the president can place every single immigrant unlawfully present in the U.S. in deportation proceedings. Because there is not enough money or employees at federal agencies and courts to accomplish that, the president will usually choose to prioritize the deportation of certain immigrants, like those who have committed serious and violent crimes in the U.S.

The federal agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 142,000 immigrants from October 2022 through September 2023, double the number of people it deported the previous fiscal year.

But under current law, the president does not have the power to summarily expel migrants who say they are afraid of returning to their country. The law requires the president to process their claims for asylum.

Biden’s ability to enforce immigration law also depends on a budget approved by Congress. Without congressional approval, the president cannot spend money to build a wall, increase immigration detention facilities’ capacity or send more Border Patrol agents to process undocumented migrants entering the country.

A large group of people are seen sitting and standing along a tall brown fence in an empty area of brown dirt.
Migrants arrive at the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to surrender to American Border Patrol agents on March 5, 2024. Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images

4. How could Biden address the current immigration problems in this country?

In early 2024, Republicans in the Senate refused to pass a bill – developed by a bipartisan team of legislators – that would have made it harder to get asylum and given Biden the power to stop taking asylum applications when migrant crossings reached a certain number.

During his speech, Biden called this bill the “toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country.”

That bill would have also provided more federal money to help immigration agencies and courts quickly review more asylum claims and expedite the asylum process, which remains backlogged with millions of cases, Biden said. Biden said the bipartisan deal would also hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers, as well as 4,300 more asylum officers.

Removing this backlog in immigration courts could mean that some undocumented migrants, who now might wait six to eight years for an asylum hearing, would instead only wait six weeks, Biden said. That means it would be “highly unlikely” migrants would pay a large amount to be smuggled into the country, only to be “kicked out quickly,” Biden said.

“My Republican friends, you owe it to the American people to get this bill done. We need to act,” Biden said.

Biden’s remarks calling for Congress to pass the bill drew jeers from some in the audience. Biden quickly responded, saying that it was a bipartisan effort: “What are you against?” he asked.

Biden is now considering using section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to get more control over immigration. This sweeping law allows the president to temporarily suspend or restrict the entry of all foreigners if their arrival is detrimental to the U.S.

This obscure law gained attention when Trump used it in January 2017 to implement a travel ban on foreigners from mainly Muslim countries. The Supreme Court upheld the travel ban in 2018.

Trump again also signed an executive order in April 2020 that blocked foreigners who were seeking lawful permanent residency from entering the country for 60 days, citing this same section of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Biden did not mention any possible use of section 212(f) during his State of the Union speech. If the president uses this, it would likely be challenged in court. It is not clear that 212(f) would apply to people already in the U.S., and it conflicts with existing asylum law that gives people within the U.S. the right to seek asylum.

Jean Lantz Reisz 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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