COVID-19 Archives - Public Seminar

COVID-19

Science and the COVID Epidemic in India

“The past as mnemonic and footnote always tempers our sense of innovation in science policy”

May 2, 2023 • by Shiv Visvanathan and Chandrika Parmar

Lockdowns reflect the arbitrariness of the state, an absence of sociological literacy about urban-rural differences, a sense of management as control without the nuances of social science that the diversity of India desperately needs....

COVID-19

Habermas on the Legitimacy of Lockdown

Habermas argued that the state’s duty to protect life outweighed all individual rights. His critics accused him of authoritarianism.

February 23, 2022 • by Peter J. Verovšek

Jürgen Habermas recently argued that the pandemic measures of the German government hadn’t gone far enough. To weigh the state’s duty to protect life against other rights and freedoms was unconstitutional, he warned. In the ensuing controversy, critics accused him of authoritarianism. ...

COVID-19

A Permanent Scar

COVID-19’s impact on young people’s futures

January 12, 2022 • by William Hayward

Almost two years after the onset of the pandemic, young people in Europe are reflecting on the impact it has had on their lives and questioning what it will mean for their future prospects. Will the lives of European youth be precarious for years to come?...

COVID-19

Be Strong

An Open Letter to My Students, Children, and Grandchildren

May 14, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky

Be strong: The virus has laid bare the complete lack of leadership in both political parties and to a great extent in the media as well. Bernie Sanders is the only figure in recent times that one can call a visionary leader, proposing a future that you all will need ...