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NSSR Responds to COVID-19

As the spread of COVID-19 affects every part of life across the world, The New School for Social Research community is putting knowledge into action. Faculty, students, and alumni are sharing their expertise on how the pandemic is affecting immigration, protests, economic policy, workers’ rights, and emotional well-being.

Read on for more from our anthropologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, historians, and more.

Last updated: 5/26/20

Illustration credit: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS

ANTHROPOLOGY

Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology:

In contrast to the buffoonery masquerading as leadership in the White House at a moment that necessitates the full mobilization of the government, Cuomo’s slideshows project a reassuring image of managerial order—one that has arguably distracted from his missteps, such as the delay in implementing social distancing measures and closing non-essential businesses. Still, the motley aesthetic of Cuomo’s briefings mirrors our own confusion and disorientation… 

Art in America: Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 Briefings Draw on the Persuasive Authority of PowerPoint
(4/13/2020)

Janet Roitman, Professor of Anthropology:

In other words, the post-Covid future can’t be appreciated using pre-Covid models and modes of valuation. It will be shaped by long-term obligations instead of high-risk/high-reward strategies or stopgap measures that merely shift risk and debt between balance sheets. 

Public Seminar: The Sesame Street Economy
(5/7/2020)

Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology:

When you depict people as dangerous contaminants, you make dehumanization and elimination more likely. This is the precarious situation we find ourselves in today with the coronavirus spreading in a time of deep polarization, xenophobia and ‘othering’ in many parts of the world, including the United States.

Immigration Impact: Coronavirus Cannot Become an Excuse to Label Groups of People ‘Invasive’
(3/20/2020)

CREATIVE PUBLISHING AND CRITICAL JOURNALISM

Mary Steffenhagen, CPCJ MA candidate:

Rather than centering public safety, police are actively endangering people who must continue to live their lives during the pandemic — and blaming them for the danger. 

Salon: One of COVID-19’s unlisted side effects: An increase in police power
(05/03/2020)

ECONOMICS

The COVID-19 Policy Forum from the Schwartz Center for Economics Policy Analysis convenes Economics faculty and students to share their ideas on progressive policies and considerations in response to the economic impacts of the coronavirus. Read updates from Professors Mark Setterfield, Paulo dos Santos, and Willi Semmler, PhD and MA students, and more.

Willi Semmler, Arnhold Professor of International Cooperation and Development:

They should have built up some buffers against such sudden shocks and risk.

New York Times: Some Companies Seeking Bailouts Had Piles of Cash, Then Spent It
(4/24/2020)

Paulo dos Santos, Assistant Professor of Economics:

To enable millions of people to focus on the areas of work needed to fight this pandemic, society needs to recognise the valuable public goods that care labour creates, and to reward those performing other essential tasks in line with the social contribution their work makes.

Public Seminar: Time for a Rethink on the Worth of Work
(4/7/2020)

Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics:

Models are needed for sensible decision-making, but so is sound judgment. For it to be applied, it is essential to recognize that models can be constructed in different ways, reflecting a range of plausible premises. 

Barron’s: The Danger of Overreliance on Epidemiological Models
(4/29/2020)

Is the coronavirus lockdown justified? One school of thought holds that any societal cost is worth paying to save a life. This seems sensible at first, but we do not honor this dictum in normal times, either in India or globally. We tolerate people dying for lack of resources, often on a mass scale, in developing countries.

The Print: Lockdown or not? COVID-19 raises key questions on decision-making in a democracy, like India
(3/31/2020)

The economics discipline has provided the most influential framework for thinking about public policies, but it has proved inadequate, both in preparing for the current emergency and for dealing with it. The pandemic underlines the necessity for a rethinking of our received ideas about economics and points in some directions that this rethinking should take.

Foreign Policy: Coronavirus and the End of Economics
(3/31/2020)

Teresa Ghilarducci, Schwartz Professor of Economics and Policy Analysis, has been been a major voice in advocating for workers’ rights, against budget cuts, and for more compassionate retirement policies:

From her Forbes blog:

Lance Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Economics:

But as it stands, the breakdown of CARES spending is already biased away from households and toward non-financial and financial business, viz.

Institute for New Economic Thinking: CARES Will Care for Wall Street and Big Business, for Macroeconomic Balance Maybe Not So Much
(4/6/2020)

The only way to restore consumption is for the government acting as the ‘borrower of last resort’ to raise its deficit and transfer the proceeds to households.

Public Seminar: COVID-19 Hits the Dual Economy
(3/30/2020)

Economics alumni are major voices for economic and monetary policy reform:

My life in quarantine

China reported zero new local cases for the first time on 3/18/20. It is just an end, but not a victory. Coronavirus is widely spreading around the world. China’s experiences show a good example to the world, as well as express confidences and hopes.

Kacy Hao (MS Economics ’19) offers a glimpse into a day of shopping, teaching, and living while under quarantine in Qingdao, China (3/24/20)

HISTORICAL STUDIES

Federico Finchelstein, Professor of History:

In stark contrast to the effective leadership shown by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and Singapore’s autocratic technocracy, the world’s far-right nationalists have met the COVID-19 crisis with something not seen in decades: the fascist politics of disease. And no one typifies this brand of politics better than Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Project Syndicate: The Fascist Politics of the Pandemic
(05/04/2020)

We are recognizing that we need a more important role for the State, one that gives answers to society. This means that in a context of so much emergency, the market is not everything. The market clearly can not resolve everything.

Clarin: La pandemia de coronavirus: ¿estamos viviendo el inicio de una Nueva Era?
(03/28/2020)

Seen from the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., Argentina seems to be an example of political sense and health-related planning.

Clarin: Mirada desde el centro de la pandemia
(03/22/20)

Claire Potter, Professor of History:

“Emergencies teach us something about what citizens want and need, and they teach us how to safeguard our economic system from grifters and market dynamics. The Great Depression, and then World War II, pushed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom to recognize social needs and respond to them. What progressives refer to approvingly as the welfare state, and conservatives as “creeping socialism” are the same ratchet effect regarded from two different political perspectives.”

Political Junkie: Governance in the Time of COVID-19
(3/24/2020)

Eli Zaretsky, Professor of History:

When the coronavirus presented them with a choice between letting people die and closing down ‘the economy’, there was no question which the masters would choose. A herd that had already had its most contentious and inquisitive members culled, and that had been rendered submissive, would easily become accustomed to the slaughter of two thousand or so per day.

Public Seminar: Culling the Herd
(5/18/2020)

LIBERAL STUDIES

Dominic Pettman, Professor of Culture and Media:

Netflix is one of the most popular strategies we have against smashing our bug-like faces against the onrushing windscreen of personalized finitude. And as such, it embodies a new kind of digital cogito: “I watch, therefore I am (not).” Indeed, I am beginning to suspect that Netflix itself has become sentient, and is trying to communicate with us, and perhaps even warn us against further dangers to come.

b2o: Netflix and Chills: On Digital Distraction During the Global Quarantine
(4/29/2020)

PHILOSOPHY

Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy:

Philosophers have had a long, tortured love affair with social distancing, beginning with Socrates confined to his cell; René Descartes withdrawn from the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War (in which he was a participant) into a room with an oven in the Netherlands to ponder the nature of certainty; others like Boethius, Thomas More and Antonio Gramsci, all part of this long tradition of isolation and thought.

New York Times: To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die
4/11/20

He also talks with The Slowdown podcast about how COVID-19 may be rewiring our very being, the need to better understand our anxiety, and how the pandemic is revealing how much we don’t know. Listen to the audio recording here (4/6/2020)

Prof. Critchley discusses mortality, hypochondria, anxiety, and pandemic on The Stone, the philosophy forum at the New York Times that he moderates. Listen to the audio recording here (3/30/2020)

Asad Haider, Assistant Professor of Philosophy:

The only way to resolve this contradiction within our current situation is for governments to mercilessly take measures that threaten the private property of capitalists and the “free market.” The more they take control of the private property of necessary industries through nationalization, provide public services and cash payments, and displace market relations by social planning, the more likely it is that we will be able to mitigate the effects of the pandemic while still allowing people to meet their survival needs. In the absence of such changes, human values are powerless against economic value.

Slate: A general strike is on the horizon in the US — but what happens after could change everything
(3/31/2020)

Jamieson Webster, part-time faculty:

This is a strange story to tell: it is about shifting ideals, how time unfolds for an individual, and the will to act or speak at the limit of life. Also, the care one must take when speaking of the dying or the dead.

New York Review of Books: End Notes: What Palliative Care Looks Like in a Pandemic

POLITICS

Nancy Fraser, Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science:

A huge aspect of class struggle in the history of capitalism has been over that care work and who’s going to pay for it.

The New Republic: A Woman’s Worth in a Pandemic
(04/28/2020)

Mark Frazier, Professor of Politics:

“Hong Kong has a long tradition of making fools of forecasters (that goes back to the 1840s), and I’m continually struck as well by how often social movements take unexpected turns in all parts of the world. That said, while I hesitate to make firm predictions on this topic, I see good reason to expect a significant resurgence of protests. There have been some even as fear of infection has led to a drop in all kinds of crowd activities.”


Public Seminar: Life and Protest in Hong Kong Amid COVID-19
(3/17/2020)

It will be extremely tempting for the CCP and the Hong Kong government to use the threat of coronavirus contagion to deny protest permits, and to use aggressive coercive techniques to prevent any “unlawful assemblies.” But the protesters have the support of an exceptionally large number of Hong Kong citizens.

Public Seminar: Hong Kong Under Lockdown
(4/28/2020)

Patrick Ciaschi, a Politics PhD candidate:

“This is the alarming thing about the transmission of fear. It infects people’s feelings and actions, causing them to behave in ways that often run against their own interests, not to mention their larger obligations to public health and social life.”


CBC: ‘Nothing spreads like fear’: COVID-19 and the dangers of emotional contagion
(3/19/2020)

Alex Aleinikoff, University Professor and head of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility:

With the ability to move about freely sharply curtailed in nearly every country in the world, immigration scholars will need to think hard about a fundamental assumption of the field: that we are living in an “age of mobility.

Public Seminar: The Fragility of the Global Mobility Regime
(5/19/2020)

For the first time in their lives, many Americans are now walking in the shoes of others. Or, rather, not walking. We are confronting government actions, policies, and admonitions that seek to dramatically limit how and when we move.

From these experiences, can we learn empathy for those around the globe for whom mobility is routinely and severely restricted: Syrians refugees trapped in camps on Lesvos, and Rohingya refugees languishing in Bangladesh; Palestinians confined to Gaza, and controlled by separation walls on the West Bank; Central Americans pushed out of the United States to wait in border towns in Mexico; Uighurs confined in “re-education” camps in Xinjiang; African migrants stopped in boats on the Mediterranean Sea and returned to Libya; victims of mass incarceration in the United States; poor people everywhere who lack the resources to begin journeys to improve their lives.

Public Seminar: The Great Immobility
(3/17/2020)

Theo Vasconcelos de Almeida, a Politics PhD student:

In short, I am suggesting a generalization of the #CancelRent demand to cover people employed in all non-essential sectors who cannot continue to work from home. However, there is an obvious problem: the interconnection between these two sectors. Even with canceled rent, many who work in the non-essential sector will not be able to pay for their food and common utilities without working.

Public Seminar: Beyond #CancelRent
(5/21/2020)

PSYCHOLOGY

Miriam Steele and Howard Steele, Professors of Psychology:

We know that securely attached adults and securely attached children are not immune to stress. The challenge is to feel able to acknowledge the stress and share one’s unsettling feelings with family members and close friends

New School News: Psychology Professors Miriam and Howard Steele Discuss How Families Can Cope with Grief and Stress During the Pandemic
(5/14/2020)

Howard Steele, Professor of Psychology:

…we need calm discussions of our fears. These conversations ought to emanate from high political offices and resonate from personal discussions with family, friends and co-workers. This will naturally lead to sympathetic and supportive behavior that may be seen as heroic problem-solving strategies. These strategies take the form of everyday actions (like washing one’s hands for 20 seconds and restricting self-touch of one’s face), as well as large-scale coordinated scientific efforts at developing treatments (ramping up the production and delivery of life-saving ventilators and protective gear for front-line health care workers) and, longer term, vaccine developments — all this can do much to attenuate the fears currently (and reasonably) felt on a universal scale.

Steele, H., (2020). COVID-19, Fear and the Future: An Attachment Perspective. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 17 (2), 97-99.

Adam Brown, Associate Professor of Psychology:

Influencers, bound by contracts and carefully crafted images, simply can’t be that free. The best they can do, Brown says, is “tap into needed resources like safety, community, a sense of trust.” He believes that with Covid-19 sticking around for an indefinite amount of time, the field will grow narrower, as more people will start “congregating” around a smaller group of influencers who can meet their needs.

Wired: Could the Coronavirus Kill Influencer Culture?
4/14/2020

…we suggest that COVID-19 requires us to prioritize and mobilize as a research and clinical community around several key areas: (a) diagnostics, (b) prevention, (c) public outreach and communication, (d) working with medical staff and mainstreaming into nonmental health services, and (e) COVID-19-specific trauma research.

Horesh, D., & Brown, A. D. (2020). Traumatic stress in the age of COVID-19: A call to close critical gaps and adapt to new realities. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(4), 331-335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0000592

Bill Hirst, Smith Professor of Psychology:

We’re essentially being forced to retreat into our own private world so the notion of New York, where the city is an extended living room, is disrupted completely.

CNN: Echoes of 9/11, as New Yorkers ‘try to keep calm but we can’t quite carry on’
(3/22/2020)

Thomas Vance, Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow:

While mental health services have shown to be inaccessible to many in the United States, research indicates that African Americans encounter added challenges that prevent them from getting the care they need. Among those challenges, according to Thomas Vance…are increased stigma associated with mental health concerns and lack of available culturally competent care

NBC News: Taraji P. Henson creates campaign to offer African Americans therapy during pandemic
(4/16/2020)

SOCIOLOGY

Malkhaz Toria, a Sociology MA student:

I had already experienced the drama of forced displacement when in 1993 my family had to leave our home in the Abkhazia region of Georgia at the end of the armed Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. But strangely, this time, I was going simultaneously through mixed feelings of joy and distress. I was not being forced to abandon my home, but was rushing back to reunite with my family – my wife and two kids — in Georgia.

TCDS PanDemos: NYC – Tbilisi: Traveling through the Pandemic into Uncertainty
(5/7/2020)

Fr. Paddy Gilger SJ, a Sociology PhD candidate:

It’s almost like, since so many of my normal habits, my regular ways of distracting myself from what my heart is saying, have been swept away by the silence of the quarantine, that God’s desire for my attention to go outwards is coming through even stronger. 

Patheos: When Quarantined, Give Your Heart Generously: A Conversation with Paddy Gilger SJ
(4/4/2020)

It is as if Milan, under quarantine, has asked me to renounce the particular version of our American response to fear that I have made my own: the unceasing effort to control, to master, to define and thereby dictate what is really real and truly true. And thereby be secure.

America: A Jesuit went to Milan to learn Italian. Covid-19 taught him something more.
(4/2/2020)

INDIA CHINA INSTITUTE

The Pandemic Discourses blog aims to foster an interdisciplinary and global dialogue on the historical, social, and political dimensions of the pandemic. It provides perspectives from different corners of the world, and especially the global South, bringing to the forefront variable and contested understandings of disease, expertise, and society. It includes noted authors from South Africa, China, Brazil, and more.

Read Pandemic Discourses here

TRANSREGIONAL CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC STUDIES

PanDemos 2020 is the latest initiative from Letters from the Field, a column devoted to news and commentary from TCDS friends and colleagues around the world. PanDemos 2020 focuses on the relationship between democracy and COVID-19, and includes letters from Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and more.

Read PanDemos 2020 letters here

NEW UNIVERSITY IN EXILE CONSORTIUM

Saladdin Ahmed, Visiting Assistant Professor at Union College:

COVID-19 is the kind of event that has momentarily confused various ruling groups. Clearly, there is a confusion about how much and what kind of information the public should be allowed to access. The confusion is mainly caused by a significant degree of conflict between the priority of the stock market and the possible political consequences of a pandemic. The virus does not have an ideology, but the outbreak will certainly have ideological consequences. It is now time for creativity. It is time to simultaneously reinvent methods of resistance against all viruses and all fascists.

Telos: COVID-19: Communism or Fascism