Category: Uncategorized (Page 10 of 14)

I found the readings this week very helpful in contextualizing the experiences of Ukrainians during this time of war. I was again drawn towards viewing these readings through a lens of mental health in times of trauma, as each source shed light on the ways people are coping with these intense times.

The source that stood out to me the most during this week was the video Faith Under Siege due to the intense visuals that were included. Through the interviews with individuals who endured torturous conditions, I was able to get a full grasp of the gravity of the hardships that the Ukrainians are forced to endure. This immediately caused me to consider how people possibly overcome these types of tragedies from a mental health perspective. The video then reveals that the community is able to keep on keeping on due to their strong unity in faith. This strong faith is also what helps the Americans connect with the Ukrainians, even though they have no connection to Ukraine, and come from areas where their daily reality centers around work and family life instead of survival. 

While it seems as if religion really helps believers get through times like these, this concept made me question how the communities that are not highlighted in this video deal with these hardships. Does the fact that some people use religion as more of a crutch in these times of war further exclude people who are not religious? One topic that I may focus my final paper on is the experience of LGBTQ asylum seekers in Berlin. Thus, this documentary made me wonder what the experience is for people who are othered by the church, such as LGBTQ people if they cannot access this type of relentless community. However, the documentary was shown through the lens of the religious community, making me wonder if the extent to this religious unity is tinted through the storytelling and message of the documentary.  

Another two texts that really stood out to me were the “why isn’t dad home” article, and the article on the bunker museum in Berlin. This is because these two texts are focused around featuring media intended to help people interpret the war. The NYT article explicitly mentions mental health in relation to children during wartime, as the books are cited as grounds for kids to be able to access, process, and vocalize their emotions. Reading about these books really helped me put myself into the shoes of the children who have to endure these hardships. Next, the bunker museum in Berlin is designed to help people empathize with the conditions in Ukraine. This unconventional means of spreading information was very interesting to me. As one of my other possible topics for the final project is looking at the Maltese enclave in Berlin, I am interested to look into the visitation data in this museum, and if it affects people’s willingness to be empathetic towards all types of immigrants and asylum seekers. 

I also found it interesting how through the ‘Union Hub’ article, and the Ukrainian museum bunker article, it seems as if both social and political efforts are being disproportionately skewed towards Ukrainian asylum seekers, in comparison to other asylum seekers such as Syrian refugees. If decide to focus on the Maltese enclave in Berlin, I would have to think carefully about the angle of my article, because it seems as if Berlin is more sympathetic and welcoming towards European immigrants than immigrants from other backgrounds. 

A common idea in this week’s readings is that children suffer in a multitude of ways during war. In A Faith Under Siege, for instance, we hear about how the Russian state wounds, kills, and abducts Ukrainian children. “Rules of war” are thrown aside altogether, as suggested by the example of a church with the word “children” written outside in chalk, which was attacked by the Russian military regardless. Even kids who are not physically harmed by war, however, aren’t able to live a peaceful childhood. The NYT article provides a quite sobering look at how children’s books, which we may think of as a medium to tell happy stories about friendships and families, can instead be used to deliver an otherwise incomprehensible reality. I was reminded of a museum on incarceration I visited for a Princeton trip, which featured children’s literature explaining why prison meant that children could not see their parents. In warfare, there is a “new normal.”

The way in which the Russian state uses the church and religion to justify its aims was fascinating. In particular, I thought the image in the documentary of priests blessing a missile was so absurd that it could have been satire. I’d be interested to find out exactly how intertwined the Russian state and church are, and how the church changes and adapts its ideology (and from where these changes come from) in order to justify atrocities.

I was also interested in the way technology has seemingly made war less asymmetrical. The Reuters podcast, for instance, notes that drones are comparatively very cheap technologies compared to missiles or tanks, and they can inflict disproportionate damage with the right methods, allowing Ukraine to put up a fight against Russia, a country with significantly more manpower and money. Even volunteers can be mobilized for the cause, as Deb’s Substack notes. The logical extension of some of the technologies with AI, though, seems uniquely unsettling: the possibility of warfare without humans “in the loop” seems to be a completely different level of armed conflict, and I wonder how that would square away with questions of responsibility: it’s already very hard to hold perpetrators of war crimes to account in the status quo — how would we even approach accountability if AI systems are responsible for these crimes?

Finally, I thought Panievsky’s book nicely explained patterns in the war on media. In particular, she identifies part of the new rhetorical strategy as framing journalism that does not align with populist goals (whatever they may be at the moment) as betrayal, which I found interesting. In a sense, journalists betray their subjects constantly, since the stories that they produce often present different accounts from stories that their subjects hold as truths (I think it was Janet Malcolm who explored this idea most thoroughly). However, Panievsky identifies how the wounding of feelings goes from happening on an individual level to a group level, and it’s in that change, the homogenization of “us” vs. “them,” that fuels populism.

The readings this week focus on Ukrainian migrants and refugees settling in Berlin and Germany more broadly. Each piece demonstrates a different aspect of the challenges confronting Ukrainians, from the trend of domestic German hostility to migrants over recent years to attacks on Ukrainians on the battlefield as well as Ukrainians who have fled and face the possibility of never seeing their home and people. What struck me across the readings was how the war has become embedded in nearly every dimension of Ukrainian life—even for those who have physically left Ukraine. This was particularly evident in the discussion of children’s books about the war. The books provide a way for families and communities to teach about and ‘cope’ with the realities of conflict. Moreover, storytelling becomes a form of historical record, an attempt to ensure that the experiences of Ukrainians are not lost as the conflict continues.

I had a similar reaction to the Guardian article, “‘A living, moving exhibition’: Ukraine Museum opens in Berlin air-raid bunker.” My immediate thought was that the museum should remain in Berlin even after the conflict ends. Beyond documenting the war itself, it could become part of broader memory studies about displacement, civilian experience, and the ways Ukrainians have become embedded in German society as a consequence of the conflict. When read with a report also by the Guardian on rising attacks against refugees amid increasing far-right crime, this raises a more difficult question about the long-term relationship between migration and political cohesion. Germany’s reception of Ukrainians cannot be understood only as a short-term humanitarian response if the war continues indefinitely. The longer the conflict lasts, the more displaced Ukrainians may become part of Germany’s social fabric and the more complicated the politics of their presence become.

The readings on drone warfare raised a different but related question about responsibility in war. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into military technology, it becomes harder to separate human decisions from the systems used to carry them out. I wonder if an AI-enabled drone mistakenly strikes a civilian hospital or school, who is responsible for the resulting casualties—the state that deployed it, the military personnel who authorized its use, or the company that developed the technology? At what point does reliance on increasingly autonomous systems create a moral hazard? Are we having these challenging discussions? The technological complexity of modern warfare creates an ethical problem that extends beyond the battlefield. When political leaders delegate increasingly consequential decisions to machines, accountability cannot be delegated as well.

The readings also emphasized how thoroughly war disrupts ordinary civilian life. Ukrainian volunteers, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, and migrants are all drawn into the conflict in different ways—war is not confined to soldiers or traditional battlefields. The protests and demonstrations organized by Ukrainian migrants, including those depicted by Vitsche, similarly show how displacement does not necessarily mean disengagement. One line from the clip particularly stood out to me: ‘war fatigue might be real, but we can’t afford that if lives are still being lost.’ After years of conflict, fatigue may be increasingly understandable, but the human consequences of the war have not diminished because it has lasted longer. For Ukrainians both inside and outside the country, resistance therefore remains not only a political act but also a way of refusing to allow continued violence to become normalized.

I was particularly struck by the depersonalization of war that the increasing integration of drone warfare implies. Drone technology, especially as AI rapidly advances, can completely abstract a human agent not only out of battle but also out of target deliberations, reducing opportunities for the human conscience to mitigate brutality. As the Reuters podcast noted, the U.S. mandates that a human being must be “in the loop” for any kinetic attack, but a lot of other nations don’t have similar restrictions – and I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that the U.S. will liberalize its guardrails to keep up with geopolitical competitors. It seems that in some ways, because they are cheaper than missiles, drone warfare will level the global playing field, preventing the bifurcation of the world into the strong and the weak (and enabling future “Ukraines” to resist their conquest, as Ukraine has).  But it also seems like the greater chasm between those who foment conflict and those who suffer that drone warfare facilitates will increase civilian casualties and lead to a proliferation of refugee crises.

I was also shocked by how holistically Ukrainians have incorporated the war into their daily lives. As Deb’s Substack illuminates, it is astonishing how people will gamble on a few extra hours of sleep rather than race to a bomb shelter, but it also makes sense: we fundamentally need to preserve mundane experiences and any illusion of normalcy. Organizing every aspect of everyday life around the possibility of death probably feels like a form of capitulation. The New York Times article about the Ukrainian children’s books that address the war is another example of this integration of the war into life, rather than treating it as the geopolitical anomaly that it is. I wondered whether the desensitization to war that these children’s books may encourage paradoxically protects childrens’ sensitivity, or whether it may be counterproductive. For example, I was slightly disturbed by the anecdote about the mom who bought her 10-year-old son books about “fighter jets, missiles, drones, and fire arms” because it “helps him have hope.” The desire to safeguard your child’s childhood is the most human instinct there is, but I wondered whether these books play a role in the excessive militarization of a society, whether treating war as normal will ultimately reproduce cycles of violence.

I was intrigued by the Russian state’s relationship to religion, as presented in the documentary A Faith Under Siege. The narrator commented that Russia is a “self-described Christian nation targeting evangelicals in Ukraine”; the persecution of white Christians (a group that is far more often persecuting others) is an image with no modern parallel, and their ethnic and religious status doubtless contributed to the outsize global response to their suffering. I wondered whether the optimism and hope that religion nurtures is particularly threatening to Putin, especially because the barbaric arbitrariness of Russia’s drone strikes against civilian targets evinces a war strategy of demoralization and the crushing of the human spirit. Putin, however, is attempting to have it both ways with religion, mobilizing the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of power. The documentary notes that “in occupied Ukraine, Russia is trying to replace God with the Russian state.” Putin knows fidelity to faith jeopardizes fidelity to him, but he also is attracted to the possibilities of weaponizing a highly regimented, hierarchical religion.

by Devon Williams

Social media has been a key player in the war in Ukraine since the very beginning of the conflict. I remember seeing posts upon posts on Instagram from friends attempting to bring awareness to the cause, to encourage the people of the US to rise in solidarity with democracy and the protection of those whose rights were being attacked. It gave us a new ‘front row’ to a conflict thousands of miles away– both making us feel more involved in the outcome and somehow more personally responsible for our role or possible role within it. Journalism used to be the sole arbiter of this exchange of experience, responsibility, and involvement, while social media collapses this chain into a single role. Panievsky’s “The Populist War on Our Right to Know” in The New Censorship explains how journalists held the responsibility for “gate-keeping, investigating, and scrutinizing” and are increasingly vilified as corrupt meddlers so much so that the “very act of mediation is disputed” within society (Panievsky, 41). Social media embodies this dispute of mediation, making journalists’ official work mute when one can post or view warfare directly on one’s phone devoid of context or verification.

Within “The Playbook: Choose Your Weapon,” she develops this idea further in describing social media as “liberating technology” for the populous that renders official media “futile and unnecessary” (43). As Ukraine’s war is one of the most visible in history with social media littered with video of drone attacks, front lines, destroyed buildings, and civilian suffering and protest circulating instantaneously, it makes the audience feel as though they know everything about the war or at least are witnessing a true, large part of it. Seeming ‘firsthand’ accounts from battlefields or civilians can appear to be almost more trustworthy than a person on TV or authoring an article published hours later, but the key piece of context, verification, and representing balanced and diverse perspectives is missing from such content. This mediation can appear unnecessary through social media, but until polarization and misinformation reach a breaking point destructive enough to be noticed, it is hard to tell for the common viewer what is missing from their sources.

Technology is consistently collapsing the role of the watcher and soldier within global warfare–  it expands who has access to information, but it also allows for continuously advancing forms of weaponry such as AI powered drones and systems (Reuters). These drones put civilians and small teams once reserved for militaries, expanding the sphere of active participants in warfare in a new way that could expand into future warfare standards. Tech not only collapses the time it takes for a viewer to experience a war but also the time and involvement with which war is enacted. Without the human mediator of a drone pilot or soldier, is personal responsibility lost? Is context and the true cost of these actions obscured for those involved?

Verification, context, human judgement, and responsibility are removed from the equation of war without the mediators of journalism or human participant in warfare. Flaws in social media information could misdirect aid efforts or place the blame of the public on the wrong person, further polarize global views of conflict, or even numb the public due to the constant and massive influx of the experience of human suffering. Flaws in weaponry technology could result in unnecessary loss of life and loss of responsibility for that suffering if the one that technically ‘pulls the trigger’ isn’t human. Currently in Ukraine drones and AI assisted targeting are only increasing even as levels of actual autonomy are varied (Reuters). This push for mechanization of both information and mechanics is driven by the desire to ‘know’ everything fully without delay and from the front lines. But as Panievsky highlights, the removing of these intermediaries does not immediately guarantee greater freedom, truth, or responsibility. Social media makes war more visible to the world, but this also makes every video impossible to verify. Without mediators it is impossible to promise truth, even if information feels more immediate to those receiving it.

By Luna Ramirez Castellanos

At 9:10 AM, a line wraps around the Ted Weiss Federal Building; the quiet crowd is pressed against the towering facade. Farther down the road, NYPD officers and two Federal Protective Service cars are stationed. A security guard paces around the line; handcuffs and a gun are visible in his back pocket. From time to time, he pushes to move into line: “Hey! One line. Make it to the side of the building.” Amidst the chaos, an Argentinian priest hopes to bring calm to those awaiting their hearings: “No tengan ningún miedo. ICE no está acá.” [“Don’t be afraid. ICE is not here”] Rev. Eduardo Fabian Arias goes to court every day.

He tells me, “Lo que está instalado aquí es el miedo.” [“What they have instilled here is fear”]

Later that morning I experienced that fear.

Inside the building, we were immediately approached by a security officer who warned us [you] “might have to leave. The courtroom size is too small to host you.” A few moments later, I sat down in the waiting room— a volunteer asked me to help her translate for a respondent. As the security officer noticed me speaking with them, he approached us: “The only thing I ask for in MY waiting room is that you remain seated. I retrieve a couple of phrases from his rant: “Everybody notices” that we are students and what we are doing is “frowned upon.” It ended with a warning:

“Be careful”.

The immigration system functions under the Executive; with judges appointed by the Attorney General, there is little room for independent supervision. Immigration Court can therefore be a black box, and most often, the only way to hold it accountable is to be there and to report back. Journalism acts as the public’s check and balance.

Though Immigration Courts are open to the public, harassment and violence directed at observers is pushing many out the door. Fear-mongering against the press reduces public scrutiny of institutions. The Guardian’s piece reminds us that this is happening worldwide, and at an alarming rate. In Germany, the figures are daunting: only last year, 218 refugee shelters faced “politically motivated” assaults, many of which were orchestrated by far-right political movements.

Read against “The New Censorship”, a term pops up: legal authoritarianism. Constant campaigning against the free press and critical journalists plays a key role in eroding democratic institutions.  Populism is both a divisor and homogeniser; while pushing for a distinction between “real people” and “corrupt elites”, the populist leader hopes to create a mono-intellectualist culture. Criticism directly challenges the populist-imposed media’s role as a mirror to what the “real” people want. Indeed, Jan-Werner Müller reminds us “populists are not anti-elitists as much as they are anti-pluralists—only one way of thinking is allowed” (p. 25). In A Faith Under Siege, Rostyslav Pavlenko, Member of the Parliament of Ukraine, makes a similar appeal regarding the Russian government: “They condemn the values of freedom; they condemn the values of free speech”.  Mykhaylo Brytsyn, Evangelical Pastor, commented on the same rhetoric. His Church, which had been persecuted during Stalin’s terror, was accused of hosting German spies. 80 years later, in 2022, they were now being accused of hosting American ones. Marc Mcdonel, a Baptist Missionary in Ukraine, experiences the same delegitimisation: he is labelled as a CIA agent, solely because of his origin.

“Democracy has been the main source of legitimacy for journalists in modern societies” (p. 39). But democratic institutions are changing. By utilising an exploitative definition of democracy, which the book defines as “direct, majoritarian, [and] expressive”, populist leadership is pushing an “illiberal democracy”.

If this is the case, how do we bring these institutions back under the magnifying glass?

Warfare is evolving in a way that jeopardizes war crime accountability. Autonomous drones illustrate this concern. Autonomous machines are operated by computers far removed from the battlefield. They are often less accurate in identifying targets than human militants are. But the real problem is that autonomous weaponry largely eliminates humans from the “kill chain,” the process by which the military carries out an attack, from target identification through the actual launch. In traditional warfare, if something goes awry, the commander is ultimately responsible, as they sit at the apex of the kill chain calling the shots. With automated decisionmaking and a compressed kill chain, it will be harder to track culpability for a specific attack. Who should be responsible for an AI drone that mistakenly targets civilians? Is it the commander who relied on autonomous drones? Or the engineers whose algorithms yielded a problematic target list? Will computer scientists stand trial for a drone’s war crimes, or nobody at all?

The introduction of civilian volunteers in the Russia-Ukraine war raises further questions about accountability. Under international humanitarian law, civilians have a protected status: both parties in a conflict must take all necessary precautions to avoid the disproportionate loss of civilian life. But what happens when thousands of civilians begin to take direct part in hostilities, and in fact get paid to do so, using weaponry offered by the state? Likely, these civilians, though not enrolled in the army, are transformed into combatants, thereby losing protections afforded to them by the Geneva Conventions. When they cease to partake in these hostilities, interestingly, they again become classified as civilians. This liminal status – not quite militants, not quite civilians – will pose challenges for investigators and lawyers attempting to discern war crimes in the aftermath of a conflict. In fact, we are already seeing this in Gaza, where the IDF can claim that most civilians killed have been those with links to Hamas. At the moment of a strike, how can a military decide whether or not its victims have a protected status?

These questions about the nuances of accountability might ultimately be unimportant, as it’s clear from this week’s readings that there is widespread disregard for the rule of law in times of war. I was particularly struck by one man’s anecdote in the Ukraine documentary: despite the clear designation that only women and children were hiding in the basement of a church, Russia’s military still chose to attack it. Hundreds of innocents died as a result. And the children who are lucky enough to survive this war suffer devastation in their own way. Some Ukrainian children are forcibly transferred to Russian territory for “re-education” in their schools (which is clearly defined as an act of genocide in Article II of the Genocide Convention, by the way).  And as the heartwrenching children’s literature depicts, the youngest generation in Ukraine is forced to confront death, violence, and unimaginable loss as facts of daily life. Bunkers are as commonplace as classrooms. I can’t quite imagine how pervasive the trauma is as a result of this war, how embedded it is in the culture. To rehabilitate the soul of the nation, not just its wrecked infrastructure, will be a core part of the “day after” rebuild.

This week’s theme is all about Ukraine. The Ukrainian museum in Berlin depicted by the Guardian article ‘A living, moving exhibition’ is striking and I imagine, very vulnerable to walk into. It touches on some of the heartbreaking stories that characterises the horror of Russian attacks against Ukraine. The ‘Social Taxi’ attack in particular, places a focus on normal, regular every day jobs and people who are targeted for showing humanity, for doing exactly what their role in life is. Something that I thought was both unsettling and concerning was Hanna Maliar’s ending quote in this piece, “My advice to Germany is whatever you do, don’t get rid of your bunkers.” If that doesn’t say that things need to change, and the war needs to stop before it becomes cataclysmic for more than just Ukraine and Russia, then I don’t know what does. I actually think that an article like this, ending on that note, should have gained traction and propelled some sort of worldly peace conversation, it was published over a year ago. Did these conversations happen? If not, my question is, how do we get them to happen?

The article in the Kyiv independent, like Deb’s own fact file in the modules for class three, provides statistics for Ukrainian refugees and their settlement in Germany. One figure that astounded me was the 20 billion Euros funded into Ukrainian accommodation and integration. It goes without saying that that is a huge amount of money, I’d be interested in seeing what this lump sum looks like in action, in Berlin. Then we continue onto the next article and the picture becomes larger, in the second Guardian article we see that ‘Berlin reports rise in attacks on refugees amid surge in far-right crime.’ I’m not overly familiar with German politics but I can say for certain that the same anti-immigrant sentiment is shared by the unfortunate rise of the Reform party UK, which vows to prevent people from crossing the borders – even those who have a right to claim asylum. This rise of the far right in this sense, seems perpetuated across borders. It seems that people are displaying active efforts to prevent violence against asylum seekers and refugees, Jian Omar expresses this in the article “We demand a clear protection plan for refugees.” There is hope.

The podcast on Reuters about the drone war immediately brought to mind operation spiders web, which I had read a significant amount about in a journalism class I took last fall. Ukraine dispersed 117 modular FPV drones that targeted – not people – but Russian military aircraft, weakening their modes of attack. Note how it’s primarily defensive, not offensive. On the subject of drones, I saw a concerning article in the NYT the other day about Open AI gaining a sort of consciousness of its own, now that is frightening, especially when drones are now being powered by AI. It feels as though all those ridiculous fiction films or novels about robots taking over the world (The Terminator or Robopocalypse) is scarily becoming a reality. In the podcast, one of the presenters mentioned how AI drones don’t need to be programmed necessarily because they can “talk to each other” or communicate like a flock of birds. Perhaps it is not corrupt political leaders we should fear, but AI powered drones, or weapons. Just a thought. Moving onto Deb’s substack, will the volunteers who are guarding the skies now and shooting down drones, have the capacity to take down AI powered drones?

Written by Leila Leibert

Reading this week’s passages provided a glimpse into the lives of the refugees fleeing Syria and internal political conflicts that persisted within the country. What struck me most was the extraordinary sacrifice these refugees took to reach Europe in the first place, oftentimes having to abandon their family, adapt to new languages, and face the stigmas of their migration. This abandonment, not only of citizenship in their home state, but their communities and professional identities adds another layer of their ability to adapt. 

Loubna Mrie’s memoir captured the unavoidable reconciliation with the very structure and government regime that provided her father, an ally of the Assad regime, a life of privilege and corruption. What stood out to me was how her own family, grandmother and her uncles, went silent instead of helping her mother since they were too afraid of what the regime might do. This betrayal made me think of the distance and separation that my own mother endured. More particularly, the sacrifices she made leaving Ethiopia, immigrating to Europe before starting new beginnings and a family in the United States. 

Reading Patrick Kingsley’s book reminded me of my mother’s story too. The years of lost connection she had from her own parents and siblings as they exiled to Germany, and her struggle contorting herself to fit in Western society, teaching herself five languages in an effort to get her point across. It made me question the feasibility of reversing migration once someone has established a new identity elsewhere– a question I find myself asking about my own mother.

By Devon Williams

Chris Bao is a man full of contradictions.

He knows that “only some people get obituaries in the New York Times,” yet insists every personal story has value.

As former head news editor of The Daily Princetonian, he has written more than 80 stories but can’t find a word to say about himself.

Even when he states he doesn’t think he is “that interesting,” it’s clear there is more to Bao than meets the eye.

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Bao grew up primarily in Plainsboro just 15 miles from Princeton. His parents, both immigrants from China, work in software engineering and financial consulting. Bao calls his younger sister “one of my best friends.”

Despite this closeness, that trust has not been as easy with his parents. Differences in values have shaped Bao’ relationship with them in adulthood, and he is of the mind “found family” with those “who consistently prove that they’re there for you, and you’re there for them as well” is the critical form of community.

“I’m grateful for a lot of my upbringing,” he said, but he also appreciates that “not every family looks alike, and not every relationship with your family is going to look the same.”

Bao spent two years of his youth in China, particularly remembering an educational emphasis on endurance, conformity, and self-sacrifice, through intense mathematical study and stories prioritizing the nation over the individual.

“Back then it seemed pretty normal,” he said.

Since returning in sixth grade, he has come to prefer American individualism. Yet time in both cultures shaped a worldview skeptical of how much “free will” people truly have over who they are.

He believes that behavior is “very heavily influenced by our environment,” rather than chosen character.

This does not allow him to tolerate cruelty or selfishness, however.

“A little bit of kindness and thoughtfulness in your interactions with other people is, I think, something that’s ultimately important,” he said.

Siyeon Lee, a close friend and fellow Daily Princetonian writer, sees those values in the way he approaches the world.

“He’s a deeply analytical person,” She said. “I think he views the world as something that he can sort of dissect and analyze and understand.”

That drive has called him to become one of the most dedicated head news editors and prolific writers the ‘Prince’ has seen.

“I don’t really think about myself, and that’s why I like journalism, because you can think about other people,” he said. “The best interviews come when I try to sort of forget all of my preconceptions and everything I know, and just try and purely hear them out.”

Lee thinks this habit explains why Bao underestimates himself. His journalism “largely stems from… listening to other people and crafting narratives about them” to the extent that “he doesn’t think about himself as much as the average person does.”

Charlie Yale, another close friend from the paper, is more blunt.

“I take issue with that.” Yale said of Bao’ claim that he is uninteresting. “I think he’s extremely interesting.”

Yale sees this humility as a reflection of the intense dedication Bao exemplifies. “If he is going to do something, it’s gonna be done well.”

Bao admits this non-stop work ethic can sometimes verge on neuroticism.

“I’m the kind of person who will ask like five people to read an email before I send it off…or if I misspelled their name even though I checked it like 17 times.”

While deep in the swing of the paper and his studies at Princeton, Bao suffered health problems relating to stress-based carpal tunnel that led him to take a gap year.

Such a setback may slow down the average person, but Bao faced it with acceptance and an unstoppable work ethic. He continued to do independent work while at home, and was still ever-present on campus and at coffee dates with his friends.

“It is entirely possible that I might not be able to do X, Y, Z in my life. But I just have to somehow come to terms with that and…focus on what I can do,” he said.

Now back at Princeton, Bao is considering law school despite his love of journalism. “There are no jobs, there is no pay. You might get assassinated!” he said, but he still loves the field even if not for the long-term.

Whatever he chooses, Lee says Bao “undersells himself.” In her mind, he would be exactly the kind of person to get the New York Times obituary he joked about.

“He would probably work for The New York Times, and then he would die in The New York Times,” she said.

At the very least, he would be well remembered by those who admire his incredible drive and dedication as a journalist but also, as a friend.