UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS & PUBLIC POLICY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC POLICY & ADMINISTRATION MPA COMPREHENSIVE EXAM – JANUARY 8, 2021 1. Identify the social justice issues in Baltimore. Explain the impact of Mayor Pugh’s decision on social justice. 2. What does this case tell us about dealing with controversial issues? More specifically, how should public administrators handle the responsibilities of transparent decision- making while balancing concerns about cost to the city, public safety, health, and well- being of the population served? 3. Other than the inconclusive public opinion poll data cited in the case, what could a research perspective have contributed to Mayor Pugh’s or her predecessors’ decision- making processes? What kind of data could have justified Pugh’s decision to take such swift action? Formulate a potential research question and describe the methods you would use to answer it. Discuss how this research might inform policy debates on this topic in Baltimore and in other cities. Administrative decision-making amid competing public sector values: Confederate statue removal in Baltimore, Maryland Nicole M. Eliasa, Sean McCandlessb, and Rashmi Chordiyac aCUNY; bUniversity of Illinois; cSeattle University ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Confederate monuments conjure competing public sector Diversity; inclusion; local values. Like many cities in the USA, Baltimore, Maryland had government; social justice; monuments honoring the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy”. values Such monuments, usually constructed during periods of racial strife, typically feature prominent figures of the Confederacy, such as generals. Proponents of such monuments argue these monuments honor historical figures that shaped US history. Opponents assert monuments symbolize racist ideals and rein- force inequality, particularly for African Americans. Baltimore had four monuments until 2017. In the aftermath of two racially charged incidents following decades of social injustices, the Mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, ordered the monu- ments’ removal in August 2017. This case examines the details and rationale surrounding Pugh’s decision in the context of competing public sector values. The knowledge and skills gained from this case study can be applied to a range of public administration and policy issues involving social justice, admin- istrative competencies, and leadership. Divisiveness surrounding the confederate legacy The history and current context of Baltimore are entrenched in social and racial justice controversies. From the post-Civil War Era, to the Civil Rights Movement, and to numerous contemporary demonstrations, Baltimore has been a deeply divided city. In 2017, several stories highlighted issues of race in Baltimore and Maryland. For instance, a Baltimore Klansman was accused of shooting an African American man at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; some members of the Baltimore Ravens professional football team knelt during the national anthem on September 24, 2017 to protest racial injustice; some white attendees and graduates of Baltimore private schools wore costumes consisting of orange prison jumpsuits with the name Freddy Gray on the back (Marbella, 2017). These issues are embedded in Baltimore’s historic issues with systemic racism, including segregation, racial oppression and violence, and more (Arnold-Garza & Gadsby, 2017). CONTACT Sean McCandless [email protected] Public Administration, University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL 62701. © 2019 Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration 413 In 2017, Baltimore experienced another dimension of these issues in the form of the debate over whether to remove its four Confederate monu- ments. Baltimore’s Mayor, Catherine Pugh, faced a significant challenge: How to weigh competing public values and decide on whether to remove the monuments or not. The Confederate monument removal in Baltimore became a focusing event, capturing the public’sattention,bothin Baltimore and across the USA (Bidgood, Bloch, McCarthy, Stack, & Andrews, 2017). Such monuments have been built in many cities across the USA, and many feature famous Confederate generals, such as Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. Others represent the common soldier or, occasionally, women who serve as symbols of the Confederate legacy. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2018), spikes in building these monuments coincide with periods of racial tension and conflict, namely when whites attempted to promote and reassert racial supremacy. Many monuments were created in the late 19th century during the Jim Crow era, which launched extensive systems of racial segregation (Upton, 2017). Other periods of construction include the early 20th century, especially up to the 1920s. The lead-up to the Centennial of the Civil War, namely in the late 1950s and 1960s, saw more monuments being built (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018). Opinions are divided on why the monuments were built. Supporters of the monuments cast them as celebrating the past, honoring ancestors, and pre- serving history. Organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy see them as public art and public history. Opponents to the monuments argue that they are built to promote white supremacy by romanticizing the Lost Cause, which casts the causes of the Civil War not in terms of a fight over slavery but as a struggle for freedom and preservation of culture. In the Lost Cause perspective, slavery is hardly discussed as the motivating factor behind the Civil War. Some proponents go as far as denying slavery as a cause, while some Lost Cause believers opine that slavery was a benign institution (Wilson, 2009). Academic arguments have focused on how the constructions of these monuments were attempts to promote the legitimacy of the Jim Crow era and to enshrine the value and preference of whiteness in America (Brown, 2017; Upton, 2017). The question for public administrators becomes: What to do with Confederate monuments fraught with controversy? Debates over whether to preserve or remove such monuments have occurred for decades. Opponents of removal typically argue that removing monuments is tanta- mount to destroying something that makes people uncomfortable. They further contend that removal ignores portions of history and diminishes the lives of their ancestors who fought on the side of the Confederacy. Proponents of removal believe the monuments send messages to African Americans that they occupy a subordinate status, are excluded from public 414 N. M. ELIAS ET AL. decision-making, and that the statues belittle oppressed populations while celebrating those who promoted and protected slavery. While some polls have found that roughly half of Americans would like Confederate monuments to remain on public view, results are very often divided along racial lines (Kahn, 2017). Several states have passed laws to impede or prohibit monuments’ removal (Subberwal, 2017). These include those passed in the early 20th century in Georgia and Virginia with others passed much later, such as in the early 2000s. The titles of these laws cast preservation in terms of honoring history; for example, the “North Carolinian Cultural History Artifact Management and Patriotism Act” (SL 2015–170) or “Tennessee’s Heritage Protection Act” (Tenn. Code Ann. Section 4–1–412). Racial tensions leading to August 15, 2017 Mayor Pugh felt urgency to act amid racial tensions and nationwide discussions of monument removal, which increased in the aftermath of two racially motivated killings (Bidgood et al., 2017). The first was the June 17, 2015 Charleston church shooting committed by a white supre- macist man who killed nine attendees of the Emanuel African Methodist EpiscopalChurchduringaprayerservice.AnotherwastheUnite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which took place on August 11–12, 2017. This rally resulted in three deaths – two state troopers killed in a helicopter crash and one counter-protester, Heather Heyer, who was killed when a white supremacist rammed his vehicle into those counter-protesting the Unite the Right rally. After the 2015 shoot- ing and up to the present, many Confederate monuments have been removed. These looming national tensions and racial issues were felt in Baltimore in 2017, and Mayor Pugh recognized these issues as detrimental to the city’s common good and public safety. The city is majority African American, and numerous African Americans from Baltimore served in the Civil War (Hopkinson, 2017). Further, Baltimore has economic, political, and social environments that affect administrative decision-making. For instance, recent Baltimore riots have drawn attention to segregation and inequities faced by the African American community, as well as improper treatment of the African American populations by the police. Some argue that children in Baltimore may find it difficult to escape poverty (Chetty & Hendren, 2015), and when considering issues of racial justice, “[e]conomic disparities, never adequately addressed due to systemic racism, continue to this day through the uneven allocation of resources to segregated neighborhoods, redistricted schools, and increased disinvestment in the city” (Arnold-Garza & Gadsby, 2017, para. 5). Numerous Baltimore residents have noted how Confederate 415 monuments were stark reminders for African Americans of their historically subordinate status in Baltimore (Marbella, 2018). As of early August 2017, Baltimore had four such monuments on public grounds. The