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 John Brennan, former Director of the CIA from 2013 to 2017, visited his alma mater in November this year. He returned to UT Austin to accept the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Clements Center for History, Strategy, and Statecraft. Upon his visit, Brennan gave a speech to UT students, entitled “ The Ethos of Public Service”. It is hard to imagine an old, white, bureaucratic man, engaging with young, liberal, and forward thinking UT students. My generation is distrusting of the previous one and we are constantly scrutinizing their every word, looking for biases and logical inconsistencies. To add to that, the CIA does not exactly have a good reputation among UT students. We remember incidents of waterboarding, Abu Ghraib, and many of us consider Snowden a personal hero. Brennan had his work cut out.

 We entered the auditorium, cold from the rain, and not sure what to expect. Post Trump election had us all on the defense. We were prepared to hear rhetoric dismissive towards millennials, downplaying racism and sexism, and antiquated views on the rest of the world. Brennan began by recounting his time at UT. He was studying for his masters in government and Middle Eastern studies. He mentioned how his wife supported him in the early years, as a gym teacher. Nothing he said was exactly sticking out to us until he said something none of us could expect. During his first year at UT, Presidential elections were being held and Brennan did not know who to vote for. He did not consider himself a Republican or a Democrat and was still unsure of politics in general. As a result, Brennan voted for the communist nominee. This piece of information finally got our attention. One shared experience that almost everyone at UT can relate to, is befriending a student who refuses to identify with any party lines, claiming corruption in both camps, then swinging to an extreme political side.Suddenly, the bureaucrat who seemed very far removed became a friend of ours we all knew.  He painted himself as someone who used to be in our shoes, unsure of the world, skeptical of authority, and eager for change.

  As the talk went on, we all laughed when he mentioned confessing this story to CIA officers interviewing him and listened intently. He approached hard topics that we were expecting him to gloss over. He spoke about his own mistreatment towards marginalized groups in the beginning and how he is deeply sorry today. He spoke about the need for diversity within the Agency. He also spoke about Trump and how he now believes that the U.S. should create a law that sets requirements for future presidents, to ensure that someone lacking government experience cannot be elected. Overall, he touched on many topics of social justice that I was not expecting him too. However, his attitudes towards diversity and marginalized groups of people, though well intentioned, were lacking understanding and complexity. Brennan falls into the camp of people who believe that once you are hired, you are completely empowered. He failed to recognize institutional biases, such as harassment in the workplace, biased systems that are already in place, and overall cultural illnesses that plague every office. He did not seem exactly willing to enter into the narrative of people minority and see issues from their perspective.

    His overall message, urging students towards public service, was more of a desperate cry than a confident encouraging word. He regularly brought up Trump and his failings as President. Brennan voiced his genuine fear and concern for his country and public disdain for our current President. Although it was encouraging to hear an older white man start to handle topics of equality and attack Trump’s haphazard foreign policy, I found his address lacking conviction. Brennan as a leader should have by example, portrayed a better way to approach combating President Trump. Brennan is a 30 year plus bureaucrat and I was surprised that he criticized Trump so adamantly, yet took no responsibility of where he failed as a government official to engage his country’s public and speak up against him. Now Brennan is very vocal against Trump, online and at speaking events, yet he provides no solution to prevent this type of election again or how to handle the current issues now. For all of his talk of leadership, public service, and duty, he seems to have abandoned his own.

 If you ask any longtime member of the Democratic party or moderate member of the Republican party, what the number one question on their mind is, they would likely reply, “ What is going on?”.  The political landscape that was well known by longtime policy makers, bureaucrats, academics, and engaged citizens, has changed dramatically, in what seems overnight. We all might be fighting over the same issues, but it seems like for radically different reasons and in incredibly different ways. Name calling used to be frowned upon. We all thought it was unacceptable to tweet about nuclear war. Now things have changed. For those of us who thought we knew what we were doing, we are finding ourselves in uncharted territory. Our compasses don’t work, our maps are out of date, and the batteries in our flashlight are dead. We are forced to adapt to this new terrain and come up with a new strategy.

 Instead of talking about the mess our political environment as a whole, I want to particularly focus on our dialogue and the new concept “safe spaces”. If you would have asked my opinion on safe spaces a few years ago, I would have laughed at them dismissively. Safe spaces hardly seem practical in the real world, and if you can’t handle the heat, maybe you shouldn’t be playing in the first place. This entire perspective changed for me, when I became someone who needed a safe place. As a survivor of sexual assault, I found myself extremely grateful for people, institutions, and laws that were put in place to make me safe. They were not a luxury to me, they were something that was a necessity. Without them, there was no room for me in the “real world”. I commend the Democratic party for pushing and championing for safe places, within the atmosphere of political discussion.

  I also challenge them to provide the same safe places for Republicans. This is where things get messy. The ultimate question always looming over our liberals heads, “If I empathize with this person who believes harmful things, am I turning my back on myself and people less privileged than me? Am I empathizing with an abuser?”. This is a hard question to handle in the face of pervasive racism, sexism, and discrimination that is running rampant in our country. Two things we know for sure must happen. We must for certain engage with the “other side”. The side we forgot about, that reared its angry and forgotten head, the side we thought didn’t matter. We also must figure out a way to engage with people who believe in different things than we do, while still holding onto our values and protecting those who need safe places.

 If no other conclusion is drawn from this discussion, we must conclude, now more than ever, people of privilege must step up to challenge and enter into “unsafe places” of discussion, where some of us can not go yet. If it is wrong to say racist slurs, it is equally wrong to ask someone who has been traumatized by racism, to engage with a racist, in order to benefit their country. As someone who has recovered, I feel that it is my responsibility towards those who are still in recovery, to have hard discussions about rape culture and consent with people who think differently. Ignoring our fellow citizens who think differently is not going to work. Yelling angry chants at them will not change our situation. If it could, we would not be here right now, on the brink of having Title IX revoked. There is no guarantee this dialogue will work quickly, painlessly, or even work at all. There is only the hope of trying something different than our previous approach. Most importantly, like any good strategist would say, for every strategy there is a reevaluation period, where we can all come together and see where have failed and where we have healed. At least the academics will be glad to crunch some numbers again.

 

My interest in Chinese development finance policy lead me to interview LBJ Assistant Professor of Public Affairs, Dr. Joshua Eisenman. Dr. Eisenman is an expert on Chinese politics. He has written several books on China, including his upcoming book Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune and China and Africa: A Century of Engagement. Dr. Eisenman also teaches policy courses on China, like China and the World, at the LBJ School of Public Policy, and is a visiting faculty member at Peking University in Beijing, China.

I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Eisenman about his own career, his experiences with Chinese policy, and his recommendations on influencing foreign policy, especially in China. I left with four key points and a better understanding of Chinese culture and politics and how those two domains of society impacts how a foreigner should act in China, engage in Chinese policy, and more broadly, understand the world around them.

According to Dr. Eisenman, here are some tips on influencing Chinese foreign policy.

First, you must recognize how Chinese diplomacy and negotiation tactics impact you. China have been having foreign relations for 5000 years and they are now experts at telling foreigners what they want to hear. Dr. Eisenman emphasized the fact that China understands that the ego is a driver of people’s behaviors.

So the Chinese lay it on thick intending to create feelings of gratitude, awe, and helplessness. To do this Dr. Eisenman explains, they treat you well. He says that, “everyone is nice, no one is disagreeable, the culture is beautiful and the food is good.”  And as a result and naturally, you are full of gratitude. Then, the Chinese will overwhelm you with the grandeur of their cities, their palaces, and cultural practices. “You are in awe of them,” Dr. Eisenman speaks from his experiences of living in China.  Finally, you are helpless. As a foreigner, chances are you don’t speak Mandarin and you become dependent on them. The Chinese, by creating these feelings, create feelings of obligation in their foreign guests.

In fact this leads to Dr. Eisenman’s second point. You must recognize that you can’t really influence Chinese foreign policy. Meanwhile, they are always trying to influence you. Chinese diplomacy sees the long term. They will first cultivate a relationship which they may be able to leverage to their advantage in the future. Dr. Eisenman adds to this, “essentially, if you think you can influence Chinese policy as a foreigner, then you are the fool.”

Despite the impossibility of influencing Chinese foreign policy, according to Dr. Eisenman as you engage with Chinese foreign policy, you will ultimately have to speak at conferences or interact with Chinese policymakers. So, here is the third thing to remember. Be humble, act with humility and modesty. These are valued characteristics in China. If you are a foreigner, it might be worthwhile to acknowledge that status as you interact with Chinese people. If you are making a speech, you might want to recognize that you have no influence over China’s policies but highlight the fact that you will share what you know and they can take that or leave it.  

Finally, in order to engage with Chinese foreign policy you must inform yourself. Dr. Eisenman warns that you should be weary as you engage with any sources in general, and especially on China. Always try to learn who wrote the source and what views they might be presenting. He mentions that, “the purpose of any good propaganda machine is to make you not know the source and the views of that source. The objective of propaganda is to mask fiction in truth the two so that it is difficult to differentiate lie from fact.”

As you research, especially in China, try to identify who is talking, what are they trying to get, and what is their angle in the piece. In addition, in any foreign policy there will information from the other side of the relationship. When researching Chinese foreign policy, it is important to look at outlets in the surrounding countries and to compare the information.

Overall, because of my conversation with Dr. Eisenman, I learned a great deal about engaging with foreign policy, both here in the U.S. and abroad. I think that some of Dr. Eisenman’s advice on engaging with China and how to inform yourself as an analyst is applicable to anyone who is interested in policy. Especially his emphasis on how important it is to read from a wide variety of sources as you learn about policy and how we all need to to critically inform ourselves about sources, the authors, and their intentions in sharing that information.