Vox - Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim ninth grader, arrested over homemade clockhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2015-09-18T08:50:02-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/91021402015-09-18T08:50:02-04:002015-09-18T08:50:02-04:00Ahmed Mohamed: The 14-year-old Texas boy and why he matters, explained
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<p>A 14-year-old Texas boy named Ahmed Mohamed has this week gone from a nerdy high school freshman, to a suspect in handcuffs, to a nationally known figure personally invited by President Obama to the White House.</p>
<p>Ahmed has also become a viral hashtag, #IStandWithAhmed, and a symbol of several distinct American problems: <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9340837/ahmed-mohamed-school-bomb-safety">security obsessions</a> in schools, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341037/ahmed-mohamed-racial-profiling/in/9102140">racial profiling</a> in policing, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9343173/stem-diversity-problems/in/9102140">diversity issues</a> in science education, and most especially <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9336967/ahmed-mohamed-islamophobia/in/9102140">Islamophobia</a>. And it all revolves around a clock.</p>
<p>Here is the story of Ahmed Mohamed, why it matters, and the bigger picture of overlapping American problems that he has brought to our attention.</p>
<h3>1. Who is Ahmed Mohamed and what is his clock?</h3>
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<p>Ahmed Mohamed is a 14-year-old high school freshman who lives in the Dallas suburb of Irving. He has a passion for engineering and tinkering with electronics. His family Muslim; his <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9339063/ahmed-mohamed-elhassan/in/9102140">father</a> immigrated from Sudan, where he still sometimes travels to launch symbolic presidential campaigns, in the 1980s.</p>
<p>On Monday, Ahmed brought one of his inventions with him to school: a simple electronic clock. He showed it to his engineering teacher, who was impressed but told Ahmed not to show it to others. In a later English class, the clock beeped and his teacher asked to see it. The teacher asked if it was a bomb; Ahmed explained, no, it was a clock.</p>
<p>The teacher confiscated the clock and said something — it's not known what — to school officials, who called the police. Police, along with the school principal, took Ahmed into another room to interrogate him. When Ahmed entered the room, he later recounted, an officer whom he'd never seen before remarked, "Yup, that's who I thought it was."</p>
<p>Police questioned Ahmed for 90 minutes, accusing him of trying to make a bomb, during which time they did not allow him to speak to his parents (which was almost certainly a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/16/police-violated-ahmed-mohamed-s-civil-rights-by-keeping-away-his-parents.html">violation of his rights</a>). Though Ahmed insisted it was only a clock, and though on cursory inspection it was indeed just a clock, they handcuffed him and led him out of the school, at which point this iconic photo was taken:</p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Ahmed's sister told me to post this. Yes this situation is real for those questioning. <a href="http://t.co/Oxd0JxUS6O">pic.twitter.com/Oxd0JxUS6O</a></p>
— Prajwol/Ru (@OfficalPrajwol) <a href="https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625">September 16, 2015</a>
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<p>Police accused Ahmed of making a "hoax bomb" and took him to a juvenile detention center, where they took finger prints and a mug shot — keep in mind that, at this point, everyone is totally aware that his clock was only a clock — and held him until his parents arrived. The school suspended him for three days.</p>
<h3>2. How did the school and local police handle all this?</h3>
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<p>Amazingly poorly. These institutions, which exist to protect children like Ahmed, instead continued to treat him as a terrorist long after it was clear that his clock was just a harmless clock, a project made to please his teachers.</p>
<p>The school claimed that Ahmed had broken the student code of conduct (against clocks?) in justifying his suspension.</p>
<p>The next day, the school <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9336557/ahmed-mohamed-clock-school/in/9102140">sent out a letter</a> to parents, which strongly suggested that the incident had been Ahmed's fault, though it didn't name him. The letter said school officials had found a "suspicious-looking item" and cited an "ongoing police investigation." It urged parents to talk to their kids about "not bringing to school items that are prohibited" and to look out for "suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior."</p>
<p>Police, meanwhile, for two days kept open their investigation, arguing that Ahmed had failed to provide them with a "<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-9th-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece">broader explanation</a>" for the clock. On Wednesday afternoon, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd issued a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9339427/ahmed-arrest-irving-police/in/9102140">statement</a> acknowledging no fault and saying that Ahmed had been "taken into custody for possession of a hoax bomb." Boyd added that Ahmed, who is to be a clear a child, "was handcuffed for his safety, and for the safety of the officers."</p>
<p>Police and school officials, the very people tasked with safeguarding Ahmed and his future, really failed him every point of the way, humiliating and punishing for pursuing his passion for engineering.</p>
<h3>3. What is #IStandWithAhmed?</h3>
<p>As Ahmed's story spread nationally on late Tuesday and early Wednesday, social media users showed solidarity by tweeting the hashtag #IStandWithHashtag. At this point, he was still suspended and under formal police investigation — it wasn't at all clear Ahmed would be allowed back in school, much less become a national hero.</p>
<p>The hashtag was meant to call attention to Ahmed's plight, the injustice of how he'd been treated, but also to speak to larger issues of discrimination; to the ways in which boys and girls in America can be discouraged from their dreams on the basis of their race or religion.</p>
<p>Two communities seemed to really rally, in the first hours, to the campaign: Muslim-Americans, who know this discrimination all too well, and technology workers, who know how important it is to be encouraged in one's early experiments with building and <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9338557/ahmed-mohammed-maker-school">how damaging it can be to be discouraged</a>.</p>
<p>Tech entrepreneur and writer Anil Dash sent a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9337055/ahmed-mohamed-anil-dash/in/9102140">series of tweets</a> late on Tuesday that, though they did not use the hashtag, captured the sentiments well:</p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">I used to take circuit boards & electronics to school, even as the only brown kid. Now, my entire job is building a community of makers.</p>
— Anil Dash (@anildash) <a href="https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644001258198695936">September 16, 2015</a>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">If any of our early geek experiments had gotten the most terrifying response possible from teachers & police, would we have kept doing it?</p>
— Anil Dash (@anildash) <a href="https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644001867643662336">September 16, 2015</a>
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<p>Some spoke more specifically to Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination, such as this powerful Facebook post by journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin:</p>
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<p>#IStandWithAhmed because I know first-hand what it is like to live in America as a teenager who is all too often...</p>
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ahmedshihabeldin">Ahmed Shihab-Eldin</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ahmedshihabeldin/posts/10102050553775592">Wednesday, September 16, 2015</a>
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<p>By Wednesday afternoon, there was a national outpouring of condemnation of how Ahmed had been treated and support for the boy himself. It was a way for people to show how they felt about his case in particular, but also a way to oppose discrimination and support creative young people who seek to overcome it.</p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Assumptions and fear don't keep us safe—they hold us back. Ahmed, stay curious and keep building. <a href="https://t.co/ywrlHUw3g1">https://t.co/ywrlHUw3g1</a></p>
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) <a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/644167278196600832">September 16, 2015</a>
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<p>You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he...</p>
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck">Mark Zuckerberg</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102373304096361">Wednesday, September 16, 2015</a>
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<p><span>It culminated with President Obama's invitation for Ahmed to visit the White House:</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.</p>
— President Obama (@POTUS) <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656">September 16, 2015</a>
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<p>This is about when the tide of events in Irving turned in Ahmed's favor. Police announced they were dropping their investigation and school officials acknowledged their earlier announcements on the incident had been "unbalanced." Ahmed, now a social media celebrity, was being flooded with internship offers and media invitation.</p>
<h3>4. Why is Ahmed Mohamed's story such a big deal?</h3>
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<p style="margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; text-align: start;" class="caption">During an earlier protest unrelated to Ahmed Mohamed, demonstrators protest police civil rights abuses in New York. (TIMOTHY CLARY/AFP/Getty)</p>
<p>Partly, it resonated for the obvious injustice of his particular, but also for the way it seemed to lay bare some much bigger problems that are sometimes hard to talk about.</p>
<p>One of those problems is schools' ever-growing, and often counter-productive, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9340837/ahmed-mohamed-school-bomb-safety">obsession with security</a>. In recent years, schools have become ever more like fortresses, with teachers and officials trained to look at their students as potential threats. Schools are increasingly organized around fear, and that fear helps explain why the Irving school and local police would want to handcuff, question, and arrest a 14-year-old boy who had made what was clearly, on even cursory inspection, just a clock.</p>
<p>It also shows the folly as well as the inhumanity of profiling — the same sort of profiling we use in security for airports and other locations, where people who look a certain way can expect to be screened and re-screened.</p>
<p>Another problem this incident got to, albeit more glancingly, is America's lagging science and math education. On one hand, the US seeks to promote science and math education and often to attract talented students from abroad, but on the other its treatment of this immigration's son shows one of the many harms of discrimination. Ahmed, as a NASA-shirt-wearing tech nerd who builds stuff in his free time, should be celebrated by his school, but instead was punished.</p>
<p>Most of all, though, it speaks to the problem of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9336967/ahmed-mohamed-islamophobia/in/9102140">Islamophobia in America</a>, the fear-based hatred of Muslims, which has been bad since 2001 but has been getting rapidly worse ever since the rise of ISIS.</p>
<p>There have been many incidents of anti-Muslim discrimination in the past year, but the issue is often difficult to talk about, and public distrust of Muslims remains widespread. Ahmed's treatment was so transparently bigoted and so totally inexcusable that it made the problem impossible to ignore.</p>
<h3>5. Can we take a video break? I keep hearing that Ahmed is adorable, but how adorable really?</h3>
<p>Judge for yourself; here's his press conference from Wednesday, in which he is introduced by his father:</p>
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<h3>6. Back to the serious stuff. Why is Islamophobia so bad lately?</h3>
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<p>There are 2.6 million American citizens who are Muslim, and their experience since 2001 has not always been an easy one. But it has worsened significantly since the rise of ISIS, which has coincided with a growing hostility in many elements of American media and politics toward Islam and Muslims.</p>
<p>Americans are <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/">more skeptical</a> about Muslims and Islam, express <a href="http://www.aaiusa.org/arab-and-muslim-americans-had-a-rough-2014">lower favorability</a> toward Muslims, are more likely to support racial profiling of Muslims, and increasingly say that Muslim Americans cannot be trusted in positions of government authority.</p>
<p>While this problem is not exclusive to the media, it is most clearly expressed there, particularly on TV, and media coverage of ISIS and Islam itself has <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6918485/the-overt-islamophobia-on-american-tv-news-is-out-of-control">frequently perpetuated Islamophobia</a>.</p>
<p>While this is most associated with Fox News, CNN has promoted a kind of "he said, she said" conception of Islam, in which it is valid and worthwhile to debate whether Muslims make for inferior people and societies. Host Chris Cuomo, for example, called Muslims "unusually violent" and "unusually barbaric." The network has run chyrons such as "IS ISLAM VIOLENT? OR PEACEFUL?"</p>
<p>Fox News has taken this to the next logical step, telling its millions of viewers over and over that Muslims are a threat who must be feared and dealt with forcefully, even violently.</p>
<p>For example, Fox News's <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/08/20/foxs_andrea_tantaros_you_solve_it_with_a_bullet_to_the_head/">Andrea Tantros</a>, in making a point about "the history of Islam," argued, "You can't solve it with a dialogue. You can't solve it with a summit. You solve it with a bullet to the head. It's the only thing these people understand." Bill O'Reilly has declared that "Islam is a destructive force" and that the US is in a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8063931/bill-oreilly-holy-war">holy war</a> with certain groups of Muslims. Host Jeanine Pirro once issued a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7533159/fox-news-pirro-rant">breathtaking seven-minute monologue</a> calling for the United States to arm death squads throughout the Muslim world to kill all Islamists and members of Islamist organizations, though many of those organizations are avowedly peaceful and have millions of members, including women and children.</p>
<p>This problem extends to the left, as well. HBO host Bill Maher frequently rants against Islam and its adherents, saying, for example, that "vast numbers of Muslims want humans to die for holding a different idea" and share "too much in common with ISIS."</p>
<p>The school and police officials in Irving, Texas, as appalling as their actions may have been, were only doing what the American TV media has been telling them to do all year: to view Muslims with fear and suspicion, and to do whatever is necessary to neutralize the threat they pose.</p>
<h3>7. Are Muslims in America at risk of more than discrimination?</h3>
<p>Thankfully, so far most of that violence has targeted Islamic buildings rather than people — a series of mosques and Islamic cemeteries have <a href="http://rt.com/usa/231839-muslim-hate-crime-religion/">been vandalized</a> — though even this is rightly perceived by Muslims as a threat of more deadly attacks.</p>
<p>In November of 2014, someone <a href="http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2014/11/04/coachella-hate-crime-shooting/18457179/">opened fire</a> on a California mosque as several worshipers prayed inside.</p>
<p>That December, a man in Kansas City wrote on his SUV that the Quran was a "disease worse than Ebola," and then drove the vehicle into a 15-year-old Muslim boy in front of a local mosque, <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article4299890.html">severing his legs</a> and killing him.</p>
<p>The January terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine, in Paris, provoked a wave of Islamophobic violence in France as well as many threats to Muslims here in the United States. (Tellingly, Vox's coverage of that Islamophobia has drawn us <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/14/7541095/charlie-hebdo-muslims-threats">more threats of violence</a>, including threats of sexual violence against women writers, than any other subject I have ever covered. These threats have expressed hatred of Muslims and outrage at Vox's criticism of anti-Muslim bigotry.)</p>
<p>Then, in February, came <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8018355/muslimlivesmatter-chapel-hill-shooting">the Chapel Hill murders</a>: A man known for both his anger problems and his hatred of religion shot to death three university students, all Muslim, in his apartment complex.</p>
<p>After that, many Muslim Americans (and sympathetic non-Muslims) began circulating the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter to express both the growing fear in communities and the sense that violence against Muslims was being ignored. While it generated media attention, anti-Muslim discrimination has nonetheless continued.</p>
<h3>8. Are politicians taking Islamophobia seriously?</h3>
<p>Some are, sort of. The Obama administration has tried to deal with this <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8065143/obama-isis-islam">some</a>, meeting with faith leaders and working to promote religious tolerance, though often this is in the context of countering violent extremism, an effort to combat ISIS propaganda that (falsely) claims the West is at war with Islam.</p>
<p>The administration has also seemed to fear that any support Obama showed for Muslim citizens would only deepen far-right conspiracy theories that he is himself Muslim, thus worsening Islamophobia. Unfortunately, as <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/25/8108005/obama-muslim-poll">polls</a> such as this from February 2015 shows, that fear may be well-founded:</p>
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<cite><p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/25/scott-walkers-view-of-obamas-religion-makes-him-a-moderate/?postshare=1651424880388887">Alex Theodoridis</a></p></cite>
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<p>More worryingly, some politicians on the right have worked to actively cultivate or indulge Islamophobia. State legislatures are passing laws banning "Sharia" or "foreign law," a barely veiled expression of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/11/5/7160303/alabama-sharia-ban-problem">official legislative hostility</a> toward Islam and Muslim-American communities.</p>
<p>In late January, a Texas state legislator <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7945541/texas-muslims">protested</a> the state capital's Muslim Capitol Day, meant to promote tolerance, by demanding that any Muslim "publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws" before entering her office. "We will see how long they stay in my office," she said.</p>
<p>Her stunt likely seemed silly to many Americans — another far-flung legislator saying something outlandish — but it was neither isolated nor fringe, but rather part of a concerted and deliberate campaign to promote anti-Muslim fear and hatred that has coincided with anti-Muslim violence.</p>
<p>Elements of the Republican Party <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/30/7931905/jindal-islam-2016">have been hijacked</a>, at state and national levels, by a fringe group of anti-Muslim activists who see Islam itself as a threat. While some leading Republicans resist their agenda, others <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/11/13-years-after-9-11-anti-muslim-bigotry-is-worse-than-ever.html">embrace it</a>; Louisiana Gov. and presidential hopeful <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/30/7931905/jindal-islam-2016">Bobby Jindal</a> has falsely claimed that Muslims in the UK have set up "no-go zones" that police refuse to enter and where Sharia law prevails, and that Muslim immigrants coming to the US are an "invasion" and "colonization."</p>
<p>On Wednesday night, during the JV round of the Republican presidential debate, moderator Jake Tapper <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341651/ahmed-mohamed-gop-debate/in/9102140">asked the candidates</a> whether Ahmed Mohamed's treatment showed discrimination:</p>
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<p>It did not go well. The candidates were clearly uncomfortable with the subject of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry and worked very hard to avoid it. Of the three candidates who answered, none could bring themselves even to say the boy's name, Ahmed Mohamed. All three attempted to shift the conversation to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue <a href="http://www.vox.com/marriage-equality">same-sex marriage</a> licenses. Jindal argued that Christians were the real victims of discrimination. Sen. Lindsey Graham said, "Young men from the Mideast are different than Kim Davis and we've got to understand that."</p>
<h3>9. What's next for Ahmed Mohamed?</h3>
<p>Short term, Ahmed says he's <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb/">transferring</a> to a different high school and plans to take up Obama's offer to visit the White House.</p>
<p>Longer-term, he's been inundated with internship <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/ahmed-mohamed-social-media-reactions/index.html">offers</a> from major tech companies. An awful lot of those offers were made publicly, which suggests that maybe some of them were designed to exploit Ahmed's trauma for a little publicity, but maybe some of them were real.</p>
<p>Ahmed seemed self-possessed and confident during media appearances in a way that speaks well of him, and his family handled the entire episode with a degree of care and savvy that seems to suggest he's growing up in a good environment.</p>
<p>The situation in the greater Dallas area, where Ahmed lives, is still not a great one for Muslim families. The mayor of Irving, Ahmed's suburb, has a <a href="http://boingboing.net/2015/09/16/irving-txs-notorious-islama.html">record</a> of appalling Islamophobia. The greater Dallas area has had one incident of high-profile Islamophobia <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9336967/ahmed-mohamed-islamophobia/in/9102140">after another</a> this year.</p>
<p>In January, for example, local Muslim families from the Dallas area gathered for an event to condemn extremism and cultivate tolerance and positive ties with the broader community — exactly the sort of thing that media and politicians so often demand of Muslims. The event was besieged by thousands of anti-Muslim protesters who shouted that "we don't want them here" amid bigoted slurs.</p>
<p>Nationally, the problem of anti-Muslim discrimination seems unlikely to abate until there is a national reckoning that renders this particular form of bigotry — which is still openly tolerated in our media and politics — out of bounds. There will be more Ahmed Mohameds.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9351413/ahmed-mohamedMax Fisher2015-09-17T12:50:01-04:002015-09-17T12:50:01-04:00This is the lesson American STEM should learn from Ahmed Mohamed
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<p>Texas police arrested Ahmed Mohamed because he was interested in engineering, took the initiative to do an independent project, and brought it in to his teacher to show the seriousness of his interest. That's exactly what American politicians, pundits and education officials keep saying America wants students to do: demonstrate an interest in STEM (science, tech, engineering and mathematics).</p>
<p>It's still all too rare. The US ranks <a href="https://www.nms.org/AboutNMSI/TheSTEMCrisis.aspx">relatively poorly</a> among developed countries in math and science education. An international test of "adult competencies" found that 58 percent of Millennials have poor skills in solving technology problems — which STEM advocacy group <a href="http://changetheequation.org/does-not-compute">Change the Equation </a>points out is ironic, since 83 percent of Millennials sleep with their smartphones.</p>
<p>We know there are <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2014/11/19/act-student-interest-in-stem-remains-steady-for-2014-graduates">more students interested in STEM at Ahmed's age</a> than people working in the STEM industry as adults. And the people who "drop out" of STEM are disproportionately women and minorities. The United States is getting substantially more diverse, but <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2015/02/24/stem-workforce-no-more-diverse-than-14-years-ago">STEM professions aren't keeping up. </a></p>
<h3>The "leaky pipeline": women and minorities have trouble translating their interest in STEM into careers</h3>
<p>The easiest defense that any individual CEO will give you if you ask about why white men are overrepresented in his business (or industry) is that it's a "pipeline problem": there simply aren't enough not-white-men people who are interested in going into the industry, and are able to develop the qualifications that can get them hired.</p>
<p>But there's very suggestive evidence that what's really going on is something some educators and experts call the "leaky pipeline": many women and "underrepresented minorities" (essentially, people who aren't white or Asian American) start their educational careers interested in STEM, but drop out of the field before they finish their schooling, or don't go into it as a profession. They're not simply washing out because they can't cut it — many of the students who "drop out" of STEM are <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-stemed-report.pdf">extremely proficient.</a> They're (on the face of it) choosing to leave, or failing to find a reason to stay.</p>
<p>According to the National Science Foundation, 42 percent of college freshmen interested in majoring in STEM are women. (There's no comparable stat for STEM-interested students who are underrepresented minorities.) Here's what happens to those proportions through a student's higher-ed career:</p>
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<p>You'll notice this isn't just a problem of students completing degrees, or pursuing advanced degrees. It's a problem of getting people to go into STEM fields after they've gotten STEM degrees. According to <a href="http://alldigitocracy.org/these-stories-of-prejudice-in-science-journalism-will-shock-you/">All Digitocracy, </a>only 5 percent of women with undergraduate degrees in STEM are holding jobs in the field 2 years after graduation; only 3 percent of them are employed in STEM 10 years after graduation.</p>
<h3>It's hard for people to stick around in fields where they're told they don't belong</h3>
<p>So what does all of this have to do with Ahmed Mohamed? He's not really an "underrepresented minority": kids born in the US to Middle Eastern/North African immigrant parents have educational outcomes that look much more like white and Asian American students than like African-American or Latino ones. And he's certainly not a woman.</p>
<p>But what school authorities and police officers taught Ahmed Mohamed this week is that he's not just a science student, he's a <em>Muslim </em>science student. His religion is more important in how people react to him than his academic interests, and it separates him from his role models and peers. That subtle message of non-belonging is one of the ways that the "leaky pipeline" allows people who aren't white (or Asian) men to give up on their interests in STEM and walk away.</p>
<p>You can see this in the research around white teachers being less likely to view their black students as "college-ready." You can see it in research showing that <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w20909">girls outscore boys on STEM tests</a> when the tests are graded anonymously — but that when names are on tests, boys outscore girls; and the subsequent finding that girls dissuaded from STEM by school experiences are less likely to go into the field in later life.</p>
<p>Or you can look at what women working in STEM told a trio of researchers (in a study published by the University of California-Hastings) they'd experienced in the workplace:</p>
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<cite><p>(<a href="https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-stem">Harvard Business Review</a>)</p></cite>
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<h3>Microaggressions aren't the biggest problem with STEM education — but they're an easy one to fix</h3>
<p>If you've been paying attention to the current debate over the "new political correctness" on college campuses, slights like these might sound familiar to you. They're microaggressions: insignificant comments or interactions that aren't intended maliciously, but that end up making their targets feel uncomfortable or insulted. Often, microaggressions work by reminding someone that he or she doesn't "belong" in a certain space. Mistaking a black woman scientist for janitorial staff is one way to do this. Arresting a young Muslim scientist because you're worried his electronic clock is a bomb is another way.</p>
<p>One of the biggest critiques of the concept of microaggressions is that there's a lot more to racial and gender inequality than how one person behaves toward another, and it can be myopic and unhelpful to focus on, literally, the micro-level of inequality. And that's certainly true. Ahmad Mohamed is educated enough to make an electronic clock as a ninth-grader; he goes to a school that prides itself on its STEM program, and his junior high school had a robotics club. There are plenty of ninth-graders out there who do not have those advantages. It might even be nice if tech giants like Facebook and Twitter, which have been falling over each other to tell Ahmed he's awesome, put some of that effort into supporting students who are interested in STEM but don't yet have the resources to make their own electronic devices.</p>
<p>More broadly, there are plenty of causes for the "leaky pipeline": students whose high schools don't teach them enough math to succeed in STEM programs in college; students who simply aren't as prepared for college socially as their peers; a society that makes it hard for women to balance their families with their careers. It would be silly to think that America can fix whatever STEM readiness problems it has just by focusing on the Ahmed Mohameds of the world.</p>
<p>But the flip side of that argument is that, compared to structural inequality in American education or American society, microaggressions are relatively easy to fix. An individual school administrator or local police officer can't change the fact that her students are going to be more or less prepared for college than students at poorer or richer schools. She can change how she treats one of her nonwhite students when he comes into class with a myterious ticking object that he explains is a clock.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9343173/stem-diversity-problemsDara Lind2015-09-17T09:40:02-04:002015-09-17T09:40:02-04:00"People will always have your back": The amazing lesson Ahmed Mohamed took from his arrest
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<p>"I felt like I was a criminal. I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called...in middle school I was called a terrorist, called a bomb maker. Just because of my race and religion." - Ahmed Mohamed #IStandWithAhmed</p>
Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/allinwithchris">All In with Chris Hayes</a> on Wednesday, September 16, 2015</blockquote>
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<p><a style="font-family: Balto, Helvetica, Arial, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.65;" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9338099/ahmed-mohamed-irving-texas-clock" target="_blank">Ahmed Mohamed</a>, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested at school and accused of trying to make a bomb because he'd brought in a homemade clock, appeared on MSNBC for an interview with Chris Hayes on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>"I felt like I was a criminal, I felt like I was a terrorist, I felt like all the names I was called," he said of the experience of being handcuffed, finger-printed, and interrogated by police. The treatment was not totally new: "In middle school I was called a terrorist, called a bomb-maker. Just because of my race and religion."</p>
<p>What is so striking about Mohamed's appearance, for which he is joined by Alia Salem from the local Council on American-Islamic Relations, is just how young he is. Seeing him sitting in the TV studio, obviously uncomfortable as he does his best to answer each question, one is reminded that this is just a child who has been thrust, against his will and by superiors who were supposed to be the ones protecting him, into the position of national celebrity.</p>
<p><q class="center" aria-hidden="true">"I didn't think I was going to get any support because I'm a Muslim boy ... People will always have your back"</q></p>
<p>Yet he never gets overwhelmed, though this experience must be overwhelming, and manages to get through it — something that a lot of grownups struggle with on national TV, especially when they're the subject of the discussion. It is heartbreaking that he had been put into a position to go on camera and explain what it felt like to be treated as a terrorist for his interest in science, yet encouraging to see him take on the challenge.</p>
<p>Ahmed described the experience of bringing the clock to school that started all this. "I thought they'd be impressed by it," he said, and indeed his engineering teacher was.</p>
<p>But when another teacher saw it and asked if it was a bomb — Ahmed explained that it was just a clock — he was treated very differently. Police brought him to be interrogated in a room in the school, he said.</p>
<p>"They told me, no, you can't call your parents, you're in the middle of an interrogation at the moment," he recounted. "One of the officers did comment on me walking in the room. ... He got back into a reclined chair and he relaxed, and he was like. And he said, that's who I thought it was."</p>
<p>Even for all he went through, Ahmed seems to have come out of the experience, amazingly, more optimistic about the world. When Hayes asked him what he thought about the outpouring of support, this was his answer, and it's really something:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I feel really well after, because before I didn't think I was going to get any support because I'm a Muslim boy. So I thought I was just going to be another victim of injustice. But thanks to all my supporters on social media, I got this far, thanks to you guys. I see it as a way of people sending a message to the rest of the world that just because something happens to you because of who you are, no matter what you do, people will always have your back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lesson that "people will always have your back" no matter what you look like is perhaps not the one that I might have taken had I gone through what Ahmed did. It is truly amazing to see him come out from this so optimistic about the world, willing to see the silver lining from his experiences rather than to be embittered by the many ways he was mistreated. It's yet another lesson we could all stand to learn from him.</p>
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<h3>VIDEO: Police statement on the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9344435/ahmed-mohamed-interviewMax Fisher2015-09-16T20:20:02-04:002015-09-16T20:20:02-04:00Ahmed Mohamed came up in the JV Republican debate. It didn't go well.
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<figcaption>Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>On Wednesday, at the first round of the Republican presidential debate, the candidates were asked about <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9338099/ahmed-mohamed-irving-texas-clock">Ahmed Mohamed</a>, whose arrest had provoked a national backlash, both against the school that arrested him and against the broader trend of Islamophobia run amok.</p>
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<p>It did not go well. The candidates were clearly uncomfortable with the subject of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry and worked very hard to avoid it. Of the three candidates who answered, none could bring themselves even to say the boy's name, Ahmed Mohamed. All three attempted to shift the conversation to Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue <a href="http://www.vox.com/marriage-equality">same-sex marriage</a> licenses.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, but depressingly, none came anywhere near acknowledging, much less condemning, the rise tide of intolerance against Muslims in America, and in some cases they fed into it.</p>
<p>Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was asked first whether the incident showed that "anti-Muslim discrimination" could go too far. Jindal, who has previously (and falsely) claimed that Muslims in the UK had converted vast areas into "no-go zones" for non-Muslims, seemed immensely uncomfortable with the question.</p>
<p>Jindal said he was glad the student had been released but avoided saying whether he should've been arrested, then pivoted immediately to Kim Davis, whom he called proof that "the biggest discrimination going on is against Christian business owners and individuals who believe in traditional forms of marriage."</p>
<p>When it was Sen. Lindsey Graham's turn to answer, he drew a bizarre contrast between Kim Davis and "young men from the Mideast," whom he said he feared. It is honestly not clear to me, reading and re-reading his answer, whether he was suggesting this fear of "young men from the Mideast" includes 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, or if he had just completely forgotten about the arrest of a child that had hours earlier become a national controversy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kim Davis, I'm not worried about her attacking me. I am worried about radical Islamic terrorists who are already here planning another 9/11. We're at war, folks, I'm not fighting a crime. I want to have a legal system that understands the difference between fighting a war and fighting a crime. And here's the reality: young men from the Mideast are different than Kim Davis and we've got to understand that. Islamic web sites need to be monitored. And if you're on one I want to know what you're doing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Former New York Gov. George Pataki answered as well, but mostly discussed Kim Davis. He did say that if Davis had been Muslim, then there would not have been "that same outrage" on her behalf.</p>
<p>In all, if you care about what happened to Ahmed Mohamed, and especially if you care about the larger trend of anti-Muslim bigotry that his story represents, then this segment of the Republican presidential debate would leave you with the impression that these candidates do not particularly care about these issues and would really rather avoid them.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341651/ahmed-mohamed-gop-debateMax Fisher2015-09-16T16:42:02-04:002015-09-16T16:42:02-04:00Ahmed Mohamed's arrest is the perfect example of why racial profiling doesn't work
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<cite><a href="https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625">Prajwol/Ru</a></cite>
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<p class="caption">(Anil Dash)</p>
<p>It's not hard to figure out why school officials and police in Irving, Texas, decided to arrest, interrogate, and suspend a 14-year-old student who had brought in a homemade clock. The student, Ahmed Mohamed, comes from a family that is Muslim and of Sudanese descent.</p>
<p>This is textbook racial and religious profiling: Mohamed looked like what the Irving police thought terrorists looked like, so they treated him differently.</p>
<p>It's also the perfect example of why profiling doesn't work. And yet, the idea remains disturbingly popular. Just Tuesday, the writer <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/15/sam-harris-racial-profiling-muslims-airports_n_8140318.html">Sam Harris</a> endorsed profiling on a radio appearance: "If Jerry Seinfeld’s going to the airport, [and] he gets the same search that someone who looks like Osama bin Laden does, that’s a crazy misuse of resources."</p>
<p>But Harris, like other proponents of profiling, is wrong: According to security experts, profiling doesn't work, and may actually be counterproductive. It's also dehumanizing and leads inevitably to abuses — as Ahmed's infuriating case demonstrates.</p>
<h3>Who "looks" like a terrorist?</h3>
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<cite><p>(Pool/Liaison)</p></cite>
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<p>Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.</p>
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<p>Here is the fundamental problem with racial and religious profiling: It is impossible to figure out who "looks" like a terrorist.</p>
<p>People like <a href="https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_or_not_to.html">Harris</a> insist that it's obvious — as he's written, "young Middle Eastern men show upon [sic] on the news, again and again." But that's false. Palestinian militant groups have repeatedly used women as suicide bombers to evade Israeli security profiling. Many of ISIS's fighters, including <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/middle-east/article35322882.html">one of its top commanders</a>, are from Chechnya — and it has <a href="http://europ">thousands of recruits</a> from central and western Europe. Jose Padilla, who was arrested in 2002 as an al-Qaeda operative, is Hispanic and grew up in New York.</p>
<p>So if you limit your profiling system to young Middle Eastern–looking men, like Ahmed, terrorists can and do use people who just look different from that. No matter how inclusive the system, this will always be a problem. Profiling, then, could actually make us <em>less</em> safe: It gives terrorists a how-to guide for evading extra airport screening and police attention.</p>
<p>"Targeted policing may actually increase total incidents of terrorism by encouraging the non-profiled group members to engage in terrorist acts — since the price to them has decreased," Columbia University scholar <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=893905">Bernard Harcourt</a> wrote in a 2006 study.</p>
<p>Other research shows that profiling doesn't work. A <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1716.full?sid=3bc684ec-b593-41e9-b03e-2e3f32bc42b0">2009 mathematical study</a> found that profiling systems have a fatal flaw: They would keep screening the <em>same</em> people who fit the profile, every time they got on a plane or entered a building, over and over again. They will end up guiding security resources to target people who, in all likelihood, weren't security threats — and directing those resources away from actual threats.</p>
<p>Security expert <a href="https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/05/to_profile_or_not_to_1.html">Bruce Schneier</a>, in a 2012 debate with Harris on the merit of profiling Muslims in airports, summarized all the ways that it not only fails but actually makes us less safe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have decreased security resulting from our imperfect profile of Muslims, decreased security resulting from our ignoring of non-Muslim terrorist threats, decreased security resulting in errors in implementing the system, increased cost due to replacing procedures with judgment, decreased efficiency (or possibly increased cost) because of the principal-agent problem, and decreased efficiency as screeners make their profiling judgments. Additionally, your system is vulnerable to mistakes in your estimation of the proper profile. If you've made any mistakes, or if the profile changes with time and you don't realize it, your system becomes even worse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Profiling makes sense if you believe that only people who look a certain way are capable of committing a certain crime. But this is not only unfounded, as actual security experts know — it also relies on lazy and, yes, bigoted thinking about who might and might not commit acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>That bigotry might <em>seem</em> unfortunately necessary to people when it takes place at an airport, but as the research shows it's not actually effective and sometimes, with incidents like the arrest of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, we are forced to confront that this sort of profiling is not only ineffective but wrong and harmful. Not only are we failing to protect schools or airports when we profile, but we are actively harming some of the innocent people who patronize those institutions just because they happen to have the wrong appearance.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9341037/ahmed-mohamed-racial-profilingZack Beauchamp2015-09-16T14:40:02-04:002015-09-16T14:40:02-04:00Ahmed Mohamed's father had his own nasty run-in with Islamophobia
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<figcaption>Joe Raedle/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The arrest of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9335793/ahmed-mohamed-irving-bomb-not">Ahmed Mohamed</a>, a 14-year-old Texas boy arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, is one vivid example of overt Islamophobia in America.</p>
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<div class="chorus-snippet s-related" data-analytics-action="link:related" data-analytics-category="article">
<span class="s-related__title">Related</span> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6918485/the-overt-islamophobia-on-american-tv-news-is-out-of-control">It's not just Fox News: Islamophobia on cable news is out of control</a><br>
</div>
<p>That's a sentiment that Mohamed's own family has tried to fight against. His father, Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed, is a fascinating figure in his own right. He's a Sudanese immigrant who has twice declared himself a presidential candidate in Sudan. When Florida pastor Terry Jones put the Quran on trial and later burned it in 2012, Mohamed was the Muslim holy book's defense attorney,</p>
<h3>Mohamed has run for president of Sudan twice</h3>
<p>Formerly a customs worker at the Khartoum International Airport, Mohamed moved to the US from Sudan in the 1980s and started out selling candy, hot dogs, and newspapers in New York, according to a <a href="http://northdallasgazette.com/2015/02/23/irving-resident-makes-his-second-bid-for-election-as-president-of-sudan/">profile in the North Dallas Gazette</a> in February. He later moved to Dallas, where he delivered pizza, drove taxis, and eventually started a cab company, Jet Taxi.</p>
<p>In 2010, he ran for president in Sudan for the National Reform Party and created a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110903180626/http://www.alislahalwatani.com/index.php/home">campaign website</a>, which described him this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ElHassan is no stranger to adversity and experienced hardship firsthand, and during his lifetime has cultivated a deep sense of humanitarianism, tolerance and patience… Mohammed became proficient in all the religious sciences and has become an aficionado of prose and poetry. He attended many public events from his early age and unintentionally upstaged other expert orators in religious and political debates and remains unequalled. He is a passionate and sometimes amusing speaker of wisdom, logic and the realities of modern-day life. He possesses a deep insight into the causes of things and is dedicated to his principles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Neither he nor his party actually appeared on the ballot. But Mohamed ran again in 2015, promising to<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-12/bashir-seen-winning-sudan-re-election-as-opposition-splintered"> negotiate lifting the sanctions on Sudan</a>, ratify human rights treaties, and repeal laws against converting from Islam. (The Sudan Tribune, based in Paris, ran a story on <a href="http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article54000">his platform</a>.)</p>
<h3>Mohamed also defended the Quran when pastor Terry Jones tried to burn it</h3>
<p>In 2012, Florida pastor Terry Jones said he was putting the Quran on trial. Jones had <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/florida_pastor_terry_joness_koran_burning_has_far_reaching_effect/2011/04/02/AFpiFoQC_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage">threatened to burn</a> the Quran before, around the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, before eventually being talked out of it by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.</p>
<p>This time, he wanted to stage a trial at his Florida church, and he needed a defense attorney. Mohamed volunteered: "[The church] put an ad on their channel: 'Whoever feels in himself he has the power to defend Quran is welcome,'" he <a href="http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why-mohamed-elhassan-the-dallas-imam-who-played-defense-attorney-in-quran-torching-church-says-he-admires-terry-jones-7130292" target="_blank">told the Dallas Observer</a>.</p>
<p>The trial ended with Jones declaring the Quran guilty of "crimes against humanity" and setting it on fire. Protests and riots in Afghanistan in response to the burning left <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/22/afghanistan-quran-burning-protesters-dead">seven people dead</a>.</p>
<p>Mohamed, who leads a small congregation of Sufi Muslims, a mystical sect of Islam that is generally more liberal, <a href="http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/why-mohamed-elhassan-the-dallas-imam-who-played-defense-attorney-in-quran-torching-church-says-he-admires-terry-jones-7130292">told the Dallas Observer</a> that he was grateful to have a chance to defend Islam, including his own interpretation of the Quran. He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-says-he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned/2011/04/05/AFKNR3oC_story.html">didn't realize</a> the church would actually burn the book, although Jones had threatened to do so before. (He also wanted an excuse to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-says-he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned/2011/04/05/AFKNR3oC_story.html">take his family t</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-says-he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned/2011/04/05/AFKNR3oC_story.html">o nearby</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-says-he-didnt-know-the-holy-book-would-be-burned/2011/04/05/AFKNR3oC_story.html"> Disney World</a>, he told the Washington Post.)</p>
<p>But he was undaunted by the experience and looked for a Texas church that would be willing to host his appeal of the verdict.</p>
<h3>Watch: The police's explanation for arresting Ahmed Mohamed</h3>
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https://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9339063/ahmed-mohamed-elhassanLibby Nelson2015-09-16T14:30:02-04:002015-09-16T14:30:02-04:00The police's infuriating response to Ahmed Mohamed's arrest
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<p>On Monday, police officers in Irving, Texas, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9338099/ahmed-mohamed-irving-texas-clock">arrested</a> a 14-year-old student named Ahmed Mohamed after he brought a homemade clock — an engineering project — to school, which one teacher reportedly suspected to be a bomb.</p>
<p>The incident has already raised widespread<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9337055/ahmed-mohamed-anil-dash/in/9102140"> outrage</a> over the detention of a clearly enthusiastic high school student who likes to tinker with electronics. The Wednesday afternoon response from Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd is unlikely to quell the anger. Instead of apologizing for an arrest that shouldn't have happened, Boyd essentially accuses Ahmed of being uncooperative and posing a threat — so much so that he had to be "handcuffed for his safety."</p>
<p>This, via the Associated Press, is the statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The student showed the device to a teacher who was concerned it was possibly the infrastructure for a bomb. School resource officers questioned the student about his intentions, and the reason he brought the device to the school. The student would only say that it was a clock and was not forthcoming at that time about any other details. Having no other information to go on, and taking into consideration the devices suspicious appearance and the safety of the students and the staff at MacArthur High School, the student was taken into custody for possession of a hoax bomb. Under Texas law, a person is guilty of possessing a hoax bomb if he possesses a device that is intended to cause anyone to be alarmed, or in reaction of any time by law enforcement officers. Follow the standard procedures that we have, the student was handcuffed for his safety, and for the safety of the officers, and transported to a juvenile processing center here at the police station. Recognizing additional facts were required, the student was released to his parents until further investigation could be completed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boyd says Ahmed would "only say it was a clock and was not forthcoming at the time about any other details." It's unclear, however, what other information a high school engineering student would need to provide about his homemade clock — except for the fact it was a clock.</p>
<p>As to whether Ahmed did, in fact, need to be handcuffed, no one aside from Ahmed and the police know what exactly happened in their Monday interaction. But one photograph of the student's arrest makes it hard to believe that the 14-year-old kid in a NASA shirt posed a threat that required restraint.</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">I expect they will have more to say tomorrow, but Ahmed's sister asked me to share this photo. A NASA shirt! <a href="http://t.co/nR4gt992gB">pic.twitter.com/nR4gt992gB</a></p>
— Anil Dash (@anildash) <a href="https://twitter.com/anildash/status/644020453724585984">September 16, 2015</a>
</blockquote>
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<p>Here's what the police statement doesn't contain: an apology. Nowhere does Boyd apologize for an arrest that shouldn't have happened. Instead, he uses his public statement to justify putting in handcuffs a high school student whose only crime was an enterprising extracurricular activity.</p>
https://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9339427/ahmed-arrest-irving-policeSarah Kliff