At the 1939 World Fair in New York City, the big attraction was "Futurama," an exhibition put on by the U.S. car manufacturer General Motors. Every visitor to Futurama received a souvenir — a small blue-white badge that read “I have seen the future.” That is, the...
In a recent panel organized by Ashley Leeds and the Women in Conflict Studies (WICS) group, I had a chance to reflect on some things I wish someone had told me while I was getting my Ph.D. The...
If border closures are stopgaps that are costly and potentially illegal, then countries must explore additional options for dealing with infectious diseases.
As an American living in London, I wake up every morning and check statistics: the number of positive cases reported the prior day in both the UK and US, the number of deaths, hospitalizations and...
This is a guest post from Dr. Rebecca Glazier, who is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She has over 10 years of experience teaching online and her pedagogical research focuses on improving online retention. Many of us are in the middle of teaching triage—scrambling to put our classes online, adjusting assignments, and responding to panicked students. What should we prioritize in this time of crisis? Lucky for us, there is not only a wealth of academic literature about best practices for teaching online, but there is also a...
The Duck has been covering Corona in a variety of ways over the past several weeks with posts including Josh's coverage of the early outbreak, the early international dynamics, past and present epidemics, the role of money and of international cooperation, how different types of political systems are handling the crisis, and so on. But thus far, we Ducksters haven't considered here what it means for us. As the resident narcissist, my time has come. While it might seem narcissistic to consider the impact on the academic world while people are dying around the world, well, ok, it is...
This is a guest post from Gabriel Cardona-Fox who lives in Bologna, Italy with his wife Patricia and two daughters. He is an Associate Fellow at the Bologna Institute for Policy Research at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) – Europe. He received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a BA from Princeton University. His research revolves around internal forced migration and humanitarian affairs. This week, Italy put in place some of the most draconian restrictions on freedoms and movement of any western...
This is a guest post from Renu Singh, PhD Candidate at Georgetown University in political science, researching public health policy, global health security, and European politics. After weeks of the spiraling transmission of COVID-19, the outbreak has spread from its source in Wuhan, China to nearly 70 locations worldwide. To date, the number of people with confirmed infections of coronavirus has surpassed 100,000, where more than 3,000 have died and over 60,000 have recovered. Mainland China, Italy, South Korea, and Iran remain the hardest hit with confirmed cases in the thousands, but the...
With the coronavirus taking hold, conferences being cancelled (I'm looking at you ISA), and college campuses like Harvard shuttering or going online, the coronavirus outbreak has gone global and upended countries and markets around the world. The worst may be yet to come. We will be posting some new guest posts, and we welcome additional submissions. I'll try to do a new post in the coming days, but here is my threaded Twitter rant on what the failures of early testing in the United States meant for the spread of the virus here.
This is a guest post from Dr. Joshua R. Moon is a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, researching biomedical research global health security policy. Research & Twitter The coronavirus epidemic that is ongoing at the moment is not the first to spark global panic and it certainly won’t be the last. Looking to the future, even as we strive to end transmission and bring the epidemic to a close, we have an opportunity to examine the 21st century’s record when it comes to health emergencies. Looking from SARS to COVID19 tells us a story of...
This is a guest post by Summer Marion, a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Northeastern University, where she is a PhD candidate in Political Science. Her research examines international cooperation and crisis politics, with a specific focus on philanthrocapitalism in global health emergencies. On February 5, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked the international community for $675 million to fund a global response plan for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, including $61.5 million to cover urgent needs between...
A quick update to my series from last week. The coronavirus has not been contained to China, and there are now nearly 1000 cases in South Korea, 270 in Italy, and 60 in Iran. Health experts and writers (see for example Ian MacKay, Devi Sridhar, James Hamblin, Helen Branswell, Michael Osterholm) now think it will eventually spread globally, meaning that containment strategies of travel restrictions will become increasingly ineffective. We are now entering a phase of having to reduce the impact and harm associated with the spread of the virus, including taking precautions at the individual...