Author: pstaniland

This is a useful new report from the International Crisis Group on contemporary Bangladeshi politics:
“The euphoria that accompanied Hasina’s departure lingers, but the harsh reality of the road ahead is becoming increasingly clear. Already in bad shape, Bangladesh’s economy is limping along, having taken a further hit from more than a month of protests and the uncertainty of the transition. Yunus’s team has struggled to restore law and order, dependent largely on a police force that was heavily implicated in the anti-protest repression. Maintaining popular support will be crucial, particularly given the interim government’s improvised legal foundations.

Rebuilding the country’s institutions will also be no mean feat, and while the interim administration is the most inclusive Bangladesh has ever seen, many of its members have little experience in government or management. Maintaining the backing of key political players is already proving challenging: some stand to benefit from an early election, and even Yunus’s allies have divergent views about issues such as constitutional reform and accountability for atrocities committed under Hasina’s rule. While Hasina’s party is now in disarray, Yunus may also face obstruction from pro-AL factions and individuals.”

At a recent kids’ concert I saw this flyer from Francis W. Parker School that highlighted its demographic diversity:

That got me curious about the ethnic and racial composition of Chicago’s three elite private schools – Parker in Lincoln Park, UChicago’s Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park, and Latin School of Chicago in the Gold Coast.

These certainly aren’t the only desirable schools in Chicago – some public neighborhood schools (my own kids attend a CPS neighborhood school) and especially selective enrollment programs and parochial schools are also hotly sought-after – but they do seem to be in a class of their own in terms of prestige. The backgrounds of the families sending their kids to these schools can tell us important things about the city’s socio-economic elite (though it’s also the case that plenty of these students attend with financial aid, so not a perfect mapping).

Below is a chart I made comparing Chicago’s ~2020 demographic makeup with the numbers reported by Parker, Lab, and Latin; these are city-wide schools so a city-wide comparison seems like the right starting point. It’s important to note a caveat that how the Census counts these categories may be different than how schools report them [also, no, I don’t know why the Parker flyer offers slightly different data than its website, but I used the latter because it says it’s the 2024-25 student body].

	Chicago	Latin	Lab	Parker
White	31	54	39	50
Hispanic	30	9	5	8
Black	29	6	9	9
Asian	7	15	19	10
Multi-Racial	3	14	19	17
Unspecified or other		2	7	6

For each school, I bolded the categories that are over-represented compared to the all-Chicago averages, and italicized those that are under-represented (they are the same across the schools). Again, there are caveats about possible differences between school and Census measures of identification (plus a couple have a decent % of Unspecified/Declined to Specify/various other categories), but the basic finding feels pretty plausible given what we know about wealth and race/ethnicity in Chicago.

The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime over the summer is one of the most dramatic events in the recent history of South Asia. I’m not a Bangladesh expert, so decided my main value-added might be to wait for some initial patterns to emerge and put the case in a broader comparative perspective. My conclusions are admittedly pretty caveated and ambiguous: Bangladesh is much better positioned than a 2011 Libya or 1990 Yugoslavia to manage dramatic revolution/political change, but there are a number of serious dangers ahead that could undermine a successful democratic transition. I identify several of these dangers, as well as the open foreign policy questions at hand. There are no hot takes to be found, but hot takes are rarely helpful anyways. The piece is here with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s South Asia Program.

With the ~1980 Canon nFD 50mm f1.4: