Jack Zuckerman’s 450 word persuasive essay on the importance of teaching rap music in schools was one of a record-breaking 7,895 entries in The New York Times’ Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest. That’s stiff competition, but the rising sophomore was pleased to discover he earned one of 45 honorable mentions. Congrats, Jack! There were 10 winners and 15 runners-up. You can read Jack’s essay below the Q &A.
Jack Zuckerman
We caught up with Jack in his hometown Manheim Township near Lancaster, PA, where he’s been working this summer at a minor league baseball stadium. He plans to double-major in film studies and business, possibly marketing.
Q: Were you surprised when you received the NY Times Contest honorable mention?
I was definitely surprised, especially because they didn’t send out emails. I found out while I was scanning the titles of recognized essays and saw my own at the bottom.
Q: Which artists would you feature in a course on rap?
At least one from every major area in rap music, so maybe Tupac for the West Coast, Nas for the East Coast, OutKast for the South, and then an artist not necessarily affiliated with a geographical movement like MF Doom.
Q: Are you going to try to get into Prof. Jeffrey McCune’s Kanye West course next year? [McCune is associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies and African and African-American studies at WashU. He teaches “The Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics.” ]
Definitely, but “try” is the key word there.
Q: What are you looking forward to when you return to campus?
I’m mostly looking forward to seeing my friends and getting more involved with my activities on campus.
Here’s the editorial Jack submitted to The New York Times contest:
We Should be Teaching Rap Music in Schools
I didn’t understand Toni Morrison until I heard Kendrick Lamar. Sure, I could try to interpret her prose and analyze her symbolism, but I couldn’t feel her work until I started listening to rap music. Nas, Killer Mike, and Kendrick connected the dots, they ripped Morrison’s words from the pages and threw them on the streets.
That sentiment isn’t meant as a slight on Morrison, but a testament to the power of music. For many high school and college students, music takes the formalism of literature and frees it from its didacticism. Bob Dylan breathes palpable fervor into an emotionally confusing decade of American history, 1920’s jazz voices the breaking and rebuilding of the interwar period. It would be a shame, then, to ignore the opportunity that today’s students have to learn about the current cultural and political climate through the lens of modern music.
When Kendrick Lamar released his sophomore album To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, a post-Trayvon-Martin, post-Michael-Brown America received it as a declaration of fearlessness and pride in the face of racial injustices. As New York Times writer Joe Coscarelli recounts, “Awash in black music, black pride and shame, [Kendrick] attempted to propel the ghosts of Nelson Mandela, Tupac Shakur, Huey Newton and Michael Jackson through the will of his conflicted rhymes.” The rapper’s cultural dominance could not be denied after one of the album’s singles “Alright” became the anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement. Suddenly, Lamar became a living, breathing representation of Baldwin and Angelou and Hughes and so many other socially conscious artists.
Moreover, Lamar and his contemporaries demand attention, especially from a younger population that tends to favor beats over books. As, almost-inarguably, the most pivotal musical trend of the past thirty years, rap music is a conduit for ideas and emotions that leads straight to the young-adult masses. With “socially-conscious hip-hop” as a rich and expanding sub-genre, there’s a supply and demand relationship begging to be utilized.
So why are we not teaching rap music like literature? Well, to a certain extent we are. New college courses about Kanye West, OutKast, and other specific rap artists are gaining popularity on campuses across the country. But this type of curriculum is not yet normalized to a point of serious integration, and it won’t be until we remove the stigma of senseless violence and sexism that surrounds rap music. We should be championing the music that avoids and surpasses these stereotypes, often by facing them head on. We should recognize that some of the loudest voices of our generation come from rappers. We should listen to Kendrick: “Let these words be your earth and moon, you consume every message.”
Works Cited
Coscarelli, Joe. “Kendrick Lamar on the Grammys, Black Lives Matter and His Big 2015.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2015. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.
Lamar, Kendrick. Mortal Man. Kendrick Lamar. Sounwave, 2015. CD.
Yoo, Noah. “OutKast Class Being Offered at Georgia College.” OutKast Class Being Offered at Georgia College | Pitchfork. Condé Nast, 06 Jan. 2017. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.
Image: Future and Kendrick Lamar at the BET Awards June 25, 2017.
The first guest speaker of the day was a correspondent for The New York Times and an author. He briefed us on the political situation in Washington D.C. under the current administration; he saw it as an interesting time in current American politics, especially because one party controlled the the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives at the same time. The Trump administration is seeking a wide range of changes in tax policy, health care policy, and global trade. The speaker also discussed the vital role that automation will play in the US manufacturing industry, offering us another way to think about the future of manufacturing in the US. Later, the Q&A session also covered topics such as over regulation/deregulation, the tax cut, and budget cuts.
After lunch, our next speaker was a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he focuses on financial regulation and technology, macroeconomics, and infrastructure finance and policy. Today’s speech was focused on the Dodd-Frank Act, which he has worked on significantly. The act promotes financial stability, accountability, and transparency in the financial systems. He then discussed Dodd-Frank’s significant impacts on the financial regulatory environment, and the balance between economics of scopes and scale and the added costs brought by the Act. Also, he mentioned the fact that the current administration is attempting to roll back certain components of the Dodd-Frank Act and the rationale behind it.
With the evolution of the influence of the Federal Reserve on financial markets and the implications of the Federal Reserve’s actions on the US economy currently being significant, our final speaker was perhaps the best person to provide insight on the institution. She has a significant history with the Federal Reserve, and continues to monitor it closely. With the U.S. economy in its 8th year of recovery, monetary policy having clearly been effective in the recovery process, is currently not particularly controversial. However, it is expected that over the next 12 months, the Federal Reserve may look to make a couple of small increases in short-term interest rates and attempt to reduce the large size of the Fed’s balance sheet, which is primarily due to the quantitative easing during the Global Financial Crisis (2008).
We were fortunate enough to begin the morning of May 17 with a speaker from Waterfall Asset Management–the visit had been rescheduled from Monday. The incident that had occurred on Monday was able to serve as an interesting case study of sorts for us. Our speaker had placed a bid for a product, but his bid had been only the second- highest submitted. He explained to us both the positive and negative lessons to be learned from this incident. The first lesson is that, in certain instances, being second best only signifies that one is the best loser. He did clarify, however, that this does not always hold true. To paraphrase him, the person who graduates last from medical school is still referred to as “Doctor.” The second lesson is that it is sometimes advantageous to lose. The entity that had outbid him for the product had done so by a wide margin. As this was the case, the entity should probably reassess the risk profile of the product that they purchased. As no other entity thought it was even close to the value as they did, it is probably riskier and worth less than what was paid for it.
In the afternoon, we departed for the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Wall Street, and there we had an insightful tour of not only the history of Federal Reserve System, but also its structure and functionality as the central banking system of the United States. Essentially, the Federal Reserve System, founded in 1913, is created to tackle the issues of financial panics. The system is composed of twelve regional banks located in a variety of cities in the U.S., such as St. Louis, Cleveland, New York, and so forth. When the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System along with the 12 presidents of regional federal reserve banks have decided to act on certain mutually agreed monetary policies, the New York Federal Reserve Bank will take the lead in carrying out the monetary policy implementation with all other Federal Reserve Banks.
On Friday, May 27, the last day of our trip in Washington, DC, our first speaker was Jim Wigand, Managing Director at Millstein & Co. He formerly served as the first director of the Office of Complex Financial Institutions at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and as a Senior Advisor to the FDIC Chairman. Although we were all somewhat fatigued after a hectic two weeks, Mr. Wigand’s voice, akin to a news reporter, woke us up. He provided an overview of the FDIC, such as the timeline of its establishment, its primary goals, and the key areas on which it focuses. In addition, he also explained the FDIC’s resolution for banks and thrifts when they are in trouble. After Mr. Wigand’s speech, we all have a better understanding of the relationship between banks and the FDIC.
After a short break, we had our second session of the final day: U.S. Financial Regulations from Cecelia Calaby, Senior VP and Executive Director of the American Bankers Association (ABA). Ms. Calaby focused on the area of regulatory policy, securities, trust, and investment at the ABA. Her session was borne from her past work experience, and she offered her thoughts about the US banking industry. First, she shared with us about her background, and how she became the Senior VP of the ABA from serving as a banker at a local bank. She then told us about her experience at a banking simulation program she recently attended. Before taking part in the program, Cecelia thought that monitoring banks’ balance sheets was pretty straight forward. After the program, however, her opinion had changed entirely as a result of the difficult situations she had to face during the training. Additionally, Cecelia gave us her thoughts about what she has seen in the past that still happens in the U.S. banking industry today. In the end, she described some of the biggest challenges that the U.S. has experienced since the Great Recession. She also explained how the ABA supplied information to the public about what was really going on during the subprime financial crisis.
Our last speaker of immersion course was Jonathan Weisman, an economic policy journalist from The New York Times. He passionately discussed today’s current events, and generously reviewed public opinions toward Donald Trump, a topic which most speakers avoid. Jonathan’s was asked where he stands when there exists a conflict between the public’s right to know and authorities’ requirement to keep certain information confidential. He told us that it was the New York Times’ tradition to lean on the side of the public’s right to know. Jonathan also shared that the Chinese New York Times website has been blocked by the Chinese government, but that The New York Times keeps updating the website every day, expecting to one day “break the wall.”
Judi McLean Parks is the Reuben C. and Anne Carpenter Taylor Professor of Organizational Behavior, and Lyda Bigelow is 
