Date:
Location:
"Whose Pandemic? The Politics of Race and Danger"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speaker:
Evan S. Lieberman, Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Contact:
Ilana Freedman
ifreedman@g.harvard.edu
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
Chairs:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, Department of the Classics; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Dimitrios Yatromanolakis, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Department of Anthropology, and the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEscuugqzMoHdGAFui-arxoMpM8u0_3QpwT
Please note: This event requires registration in advance in order to receive the meeting link and password.
Abstract:
In racially-divided societies, what are the political and policy consequences of informational campaigns that highlight racially unequal disease burdens? In this talk, I describe the motivations for and the possible pitfalls of such efforts during the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics in the United States, South Africa, Brazil and India. And I present results from a recent survey experiment conducted with 4000 American adults in which we randomized delivery of information about race-based disparities in COVID-related death rates. Although some evidence is mixed, the reinforcing of race-differentiated boundaries of contagion may harm more than help the public health efforts at disease control.
