“World After Coronavirus” Series Featured in BU Today
Adill Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, an affiliate center of the Pardee School of Global Studies, and it’s video series, “The World After Coronavirus,” were featured in BU Today on July 1, 2020.
“The World After Coronavirus” is a Pardee Center video interview series that has featured leading experts and practitioners from Boston University and across the world as they explore the challenges and opportunities we will face in the post-coronavirus future. The article highlights the inception of the video interview series, the breadth of topics it has covered, and what it has revealed about the future.
In describing the series, Najam says his aim is to ask simple questions that get at the heart of the issues he explores with guests. He says that “The World After Coronavirus” has cemented the idea that the world has reached a turning point and will not return to the way it was before this global health crisis.
An excerpt:
Shortly after BU canceled all campus events, including the seminars and conferences that are the lifeblood of Pardee and its affiliated Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Najam came up with an idea: he would ask 10 to 12 experts, via Zoom, about the post–COVID-19 future of their fields…
So, what has he learned after three months and 67 Zoom interviews? Several themes have emerged, including one that he says upended any thought he had about the world returning to anything like what it was before. ‘If I was in doubt in March, I am no longer in doubt—this is a turning point,’ he says. ‘I’ve learned that if we are waiting for after COVID, we are there. The world after coronavirus is a new world and we are now already inhabiting it. That, to me, is a pretty big deal.’
The full article can be found here.
Guests on “The World After Coronavirus” have included Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Graham Allison, Professor and Former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Ibram X. Kendi, Founding Director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and many more. The full series can be viewed on the Pardee School’s YouTube Channel.