'A Moment of Clarity'
Welcome to ‘A Moment of Clarity’ - our curation of views on the challenges posed by COVID-19 from global subject matter experts and the Aspen Institute’s International Network. (Please note that the views and opinions of the authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Aspen Institute New Zealand).
We would like to hear your feedback, do email us your thoughts and recommendations.
September 1 INNOVATION
Fast Company: Working from 'anywhere' is possible - but not sustainable. Read more.
August 30 HEALTH
Guardian: The race for a Covid-19 vaccine. Read more.
August 26 TECHNOLOGY
Wired: Open source can play a pivotal role in fighting Covid-19. Read more.
August 25 ECONOMY
Project Syndicate: America's coming double dip. Read more.
August 18 ENERGY
Aspen Fellows: Changing geo-politics of energy post COVID world. Watch.
July 13 HEALTH
The Atlantic: How we can use chaos theory to understand and influence coronavirus herd immunity
The portion of the population that needs to get sick is not fixed. We can change it. Read more.
July 9 HEALTH
WHO: Helen Clark to co-chair independent evaluation of world COVID-19 response
WHO Director-General today announced the initiation of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) to evaluate the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more.
July 7 BUSINESS
HBR: These businesses have successfully pivoted during the pandemic
The nearly instantaneous economic recession triggered by the Covid-19 shutdown has wreaked havoc on businesses large and small. Read more.
June 30 ECONOMY
The ocean is key to economic recovery
Over the past 75 years, the United States has tapped investment and innovation to lead the world out of myriad crises. Read more.
June 29 ECONOMY
Stanford News: The new work-from-home economy could erode city life and drive inequality
Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom discusses the societal impacts of a new “working-from-home economy” and the challenges posed by the massive transition to widespread remote work. Read more.
June 26 FINANCE
Project Syndicate: New Zealand’s Public Finance Act a model to follow
Given that the COVID-19 crisis demands unprecedented levels of stimulus spending, policymakers should use the occasion to adopt a more flexible form of public-sector accounting. Read more.
June 28 HEALTH
Aspen Ideas Festival Webinar: Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks with Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent. See video here.
June 22 RISK
Fast Company: When will big business wake up to the unpredictability all around us?
Post-coronavirus, valuations do not have to settle at structurally lower levels. Rather, a robust stock market should be predicated on a rational economy: one that anticipates and reflects the values of a post-pandemic society. Read more.
June 19 COMMUNICATION
Stanford: How we tell the emerging story of COVID-19 can help build a better future
The groups that set the narratives about what happened during the COVID-19 crisis, what to do now, and what’s next will have outsized influence on who we hold responsible, who gets help, and what we do moving forward. Read more.
June 14 WORLD AFFAIRS
Aspen Minister’s Forum: Twenty-Seven Foreign Ministers Issue Call for United Nations to Coordinate Global COVID-19 Response
We are a group of former foreign ministers from every region of the world, who bring to bear decades of experience in conducting international diplomacy, responding to crises, and reforming international institutions. Never before have we seen a challenge as acute, complex, far-reaching, and potentially long-lasting as the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has exposed flaws in the international system, it has also reminded us of the need for cooperation and leadership at every level.
We urge the United Nations to implement the following five points of action:
1. The General Assembly Should Hold a Virtual Emergency Special Session
2. The Security Council Must Address the Pandemic
3. The Secretary-General Should Bring Global Institutions Together to Devise an Economic Recovery Strategy
4. The Secretary-General Should Promote a Coordinated Debt Relief Plan
5. The United Nations Should Promote a Broader Concept of Security
June 12 HEALTH
NPR: Coronavirus 2nd Wave? Nope, The U.S. Is Still Stuck In The 1st One
Just weeks after parts of the U.S. began reopening, coronavirus infections are on the upswing in several states, including Arizona, Utah, Texas and Florida. Dramatic increases in daily case counts have given rise to some unsettling questions: Is the U.S. at the start of a second wave? Have states reopened too soon? And have the recent widespread demonstrations against racial injustice inadvertently added fuel to the fire?
The short, unpleasant answer to the first question is that the U.S. has not even gotten through the current first wave of infections. Read more.
June 11 SUPPLY CHAINS
Project Syndicate: The Economic Consequences of Disrupted Global Supply Chains
The strain on global supply chains partly reflects the turn by many governments toward protectionist policies since the openness of the world economy peaked in 2011. And now, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a supply-shock recession. The related uncertainty may slow the expansion of global value chains by at least 35%. Indeed, world trade is no longer expanding faster than world GDP. If this continues, companies will reshore manufacturing from Asia and elsewhere. Read more.
June 10 EQUITY
The Guardian: ‘Are you immune?’ The new class system that could shape the Covid-19 world
Eric Klinenberg, sociologist and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, says immunity is not “the new golden ticket” it is perceived to be.
“That just opens up a Pandora’s box of questions about how we determine who’s immune, about how we record and register who’s immune, about how we track people and what happens to people who are not?” he says. “So I can very easily see it becoming yet another source of controversy in an already divided country.” Read more.
June 2 RACIAL EQUITY
Aspen Institute: We Must Keep Their Names Alive
Although violence and destruction are never the answer in these communities, it is critically important to understand the context that undergirds it. The Aspen Institute’s Criminal Justice Reform Initiative is launching a new podcast called Shades of Freedom. A critical part of the work of the Criminal Justice Initiative will be to work with the Justice Mapping Project in co-creating a Justice Audit—in collaboration with community partners—in localities across the country. We believe this is critically important to the interests of impactful, sustainable, transformative criminal justice reform and social change in neighborhoods of overlapping inequalities. Read more.
May 29 INTERNATIONAL
NBC News Think: As nations struggle with COVID-19, ISIS is rebuilding
“The Islamic State group has been moving the fighting from Syria to Iraq ... (and) is strengthening, both financially and militarily,” said Lt. Col. Stein Grongstad, head of Norway’s forces in Iraq, there to advise and assist the Iraqi military. He called it a “paradox” that just as COVID-19 was weakening nations, ISIS was regaining strength. Read more.
May 28 LEADERSHIP
Aspen Institute: Statement on the killing of George Floyd
The Aspen Institute shares the grief and anger of Americans everywhere as we react to the unconscionable killing of George Floyd, who died at the hands of Minneapolis police while pleading for his life saying the words, “I can’t breathe.”
Our hearts go out to Mr. Floyd and his family, and to the people of Minneapolis where lives are in jeopardy right now as citizens come out of their homes to condemn Mr. Floyd’s killing. Local authorities must lead wisely, prioritizing justice, and law enforcement must protect public safety in ways that avoid exacerbating injustice and creating more casualties. We need accountability.
In the face of America’s persistent structural racism and violence against individuals and communities of color, we all must do more.
We need to keep calling for accountable government and law enforcement, and social policies that prioritize equity and justice. We need to continue to come up with new ways to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion in the core practices of all of our institutions. And, looking within, we need to discern and confront racism and other learned prejudices in our everyday lives, seeking to understand and dismantle ways that we have either benefited from or perpetuated discrimination and injustice.
May 27 LEADERSHIP
Goats and Soda: How did some nations bring their number of new cases to nearly zero?
Over the past month, Hong Kong has averaged one new confirmed coronavirus case a day. Taiwan has reported only one case in the past three weeks. The situation is similar in Vietnam. Although the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow globally, there are places that have managed to successfully control COVID-19.
New Zealand's triumph. Perhaps the greatest success story is New Zealand, which has stopped local transmission and has a plan to completely eliminate the virus from its territory. Read more.
May 22 EDUCATION
University of Otago: Responding to the global pandemic - Otago’s story
In mid-January, before the longest March anyone could remember, a call came into the University of Otago’s International Office. It was from a student in Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak. “He was really distressed, he was yelling down the phone ‘I’m trapped, I can’t come to university, they’ve closed the borders, people are dying, most of us don’t even know what’s going on, what can I do?’” remembered Danielle Yamamoto Kerr, Otago’s Manager of International Student Services. Read more.
May 18 INTERNATIONAL
The Atlantic: The pandemic’s geo-political aftershocks are coming
With most European countries confident that they are past the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, their attention is turning to the chance of its resurgence once society returns to some semblance of normal. But beyond the epidemiological challenges lies a slowly amassing threat that is not pathological in nature, but economic, political, and military. This is the geopolitical second wave, and its power is already starting to concern Western leaders. Read more.
May 13 SOCIETY
Politico: Seeking work and safety, this is how populations could shift after COVID-19
As we contemplate all the ways that Covid-19 could change the world, big and small, we should consider that the pandemic’s combined effect on public health, the economy and social behavior may cause fundamental shifts in our human geography. Why choose to stay in a crowded city where body bags piled high during the worst parts of the pandemic? Why especially, when Covid-19 has shown many employers that remote work is a serious possibility? Read more.
April 30 TECHNOLOGY
Breaking Up Big Tech: What can we expect from antitrust investigations?
Professor at Columbia Law School Tim Wu discussed how Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have evolved into massive powerhouses of innovation and market domination. Watch webinar.
April 30 HEALTH
Fast Company: How open source medicine could prepare us for the next pandemic.
The response to COVID-19 has been more open-source than any drug effort in modern memory. The gathering of resources and grassroots sharing of information aimed at combating the coronavirus has put open-source methods of drug development front and center. Read more.
April 28 SOCIETY
Lawfare: World War COVID-19: Who bleeds, who pays?
But if this is a war, it’s a war like few others in history—if any. Read more.
April 27 MEDIA
Forbes: Sightlines we can trust in times of crisis, Dan Porterfield
Because “war is the realm of uncertainty,” wrote the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz in the classic study On War, navigating it requires “a sensitive and discriminating judgment…a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.” Read more.
April 25 TECHNOLOGY
Techcrunch: If Silicon Valley is going to help us solve big problems, it needs a better approach to ethics.
The answers to the values-based questions we explored (such as the trade-offs between misinformation and free speech) didn’t converge on clear “right” or “wrong” answers. Instead, participants told us that the discussions were crucial for developing skills to more effectively check their own biases and make informed decisions. One student said:
After walking through a series of questions, thought experiments or discussion topics with the professors, and thinking deeply about each of the subtending issues, I often ended up with the opposite positions to what I initially believed.
April 22 SOCIETY
Smithsonian: How ‘social distancing’ can get lost in translation.
The way that terms like “social distancing,” are adopted across languages provides a way to understand how countries across the globe are coping with the COVID-19 threat. For instance, the Mandarin Chinese translation of “social distancing”, or ju-li-yuan-dian, is interpreted differently in Wuhan dialect, explains Jin. “Instead of ‘keep a distance,’ Wuhan dialect literally translates this as ‘send far away.’” Read more.
April 15 DEMOCRACY
Brookings Institute: How coronavirus is threatening democratic institutions around the world.
It has become a truism to assert that the pandemic highlights the enduring importance of the nation-state. What is less clear, but as important, is what it does to nation-states’ operating systems: their constitutions. Read more.
April 10 TECHNOLOGY
The Verge: How contact tracing will help us get ahead of the pandemic.
Technology used by the US contact tracing strategy going forward may use cellphone data, for example. Today, Google and Apple announced that they are building a system to let phones use Bluetooth data to track when they’re near each other. If someone tests positive for the virus, they could tell the app, which will then notify all of the people whose phones were nearby. Read more.
April 9 ECONOMY | MEDIA
Aspen Digital: Devastating economic SHOCK and AWE inspiring global stimulus.
Chief Economist and Co-Founder of Cornerstone Macro Nancy Lazar shared her insights into the recent market plunge and ensuing volatility, the impact of the unprecedented stimulus, and the longer-term economic outlook. Watch here.
Aspen Digital: Press Freedom at Risk: How the pandemic is threatening truth telling around the world.
Would-be autocrats around the world are using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover for tightening their grip on power. And cracking down on journalism is the first order of business. From Eastern Europe to South Asia to Latin America and Africa, vast restrictions on the press are criminalizing independent reporting. At stake is the public’s right to know, and at a time when the stakes have never been higher.
In this session we meet reporters on four continents who are experiencing this firsthand. Also joining us is Joel Simon, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is on the front lines of advocating for a free press. Watch here.
April 8 DEMOCRACY
Aspen Romania: An Open Letter ‘A Return Towards Romania’.
We begin our open letter with the strong affirmation of our ferm belief in our enduring strength as a nation and the commitment to prevail over the medical, social and economic situation created by the coronavirus pandemic. The members of the Aspen Institute Romania, companies and individuals alike, reinforce this message and commit, now more than ever, to their contribution to four pillars of action which we call A Return towards Romania. Read more.
April 7 INTERNATIONAL | CHINA
Helen Clark: Missing in Action, the lack of a globally coordinated response to COVID-19.
OPINION: Since January, I have been following international coverage and debate about Covid-19 closely.
Looking back over almost three months now, what seems extraordinary is how flat footed the international response has been.
An exception to that has been that of the much-maligned World Health Organisation (WHO), which from the outset has endeavoured to provide information and advice as soon as it could. Read more.
Brookings: What we can learn from New York, San Francisco and Taiwan for the next stage of this virus.
Can poorer countries learn anything from the experience of two wealthy cities? I think so, and here are my top takeaways:
1. PAY ATTENTION TO ECONOMIC—NOT PHYSICAL—GEOGRAPHY
2. TREAT POVERTY AS AN “UNDERLYING CONDITION”
3. TEST, TREAT, TRACK, AND TALK (LIKE THE TAIWANESE). Read more.
Hinrich Foundation: Can China lead the economic recovery from COVID-19?
Will China emerge from the COVID-19 disaster with its global standing enhanced through careful use of soft power and messaging? For some, the prospect that China may lead the economic recovery from COVID-19 offers familiar consolation, based on the idea that a prosperous China means a healthy global economy … Unfortunately, these much need reforms may not happen until all other avenues have been exhausted. It is more likely that the statistical rebound in economic data will be led by Asia but a sustained global economic recovery will be driven by the fiscal response of the West. Read more.
April 3 SOCIETY
Todd Breyfogle, Aspen Executive Leadership Seminars: Learning in a time of isolation.
On a Sunday evening in October 1939, C. S. Lewis took the pulpit in Oxford and gave a sermon, “Learning in War-Time”. Lewis reminds us that even in times of crisis we will continue to learn. Whether we like it or not, we will read, we will hear, we will see. For a culture to have the muscle to meet the demands of war, it must ensure that what we read, hear, and see do not weaken us, but build us up, making us more worthy of meeting the moment. Read more.
March 30 BUSINESS
Mariana Mazzucato, Project Syndicate: Capitalism’s Triple Crisis.
After the 2008 financial crisis, we learned the hard way what happens when governments flood the economy with unconditional liquidity, rather than laying the foundation for a sustainable and inclusive recovery. Now that an even more severe crisis is underway, we must not repeat the same mistake. Read more.
March 30 TRADE
Hinrich Foundation: COVID-19 impact on business: Will the pandemic trigger more state intervention in business strategies?
COVID-19 will impact businesses in the long-run by fundamentally changing the way multinational enterprises (MNEs) run their operations. The pandemic is accelerating nationalist forces that have become catalysts for de-globalization and localization. It is also raising questions about how much of the economic self-interest of MNEs is in alignment with national security policies. This will put constraints on present-day corporate strategies. Read more.
March 25 FOOD
Robyn Metcalf: Our Food Supply Chain Has Been Tested Before. We Adapted.
By mid-February, we watched our food supply become headline news. Worries about toilet paper shortages quickly shifted to whether we’d ever enjoy pasta again, not to mention whether we’d enjoy that meal in the presence of our loved ones. Just a few months before, we were debating whether we’d disavow meat in our diet or if vertical farms in cities would bring food closer to us. Whether we would eat at all had never occurred to us. Read more.
March 25 HEALTH
The Atlantic: How the Pandemic Will End.
Three months ago, no one knew that SARS-CoV-2 existed. Now the virus has spread to almost every country, infecting at least 446,000 people whom we know about, and many more whom we do not. It has crashed economies and broken health-care systems, filled hospitals and emptied public spaces. It has separated people from their workplaces and their friends. It has disrupted modern society on a scale that most living people have never witnessed. Read more .
March 24 TECHNOLOGY
David Forscey: How to Work Remotely and Securely.
The coronavirus pandemic has radically altered how businesses operate. Across the country, organizations are directing employees to work from home—in many cases indefinitely. This sudden and unprecedented shift creates serious cybersecurity risks for both companies and their employees:The perimeter is gone, ransomeware canbe more damaging and deception is easier. Read more.
March 20 INTERNATIONAL
Madeleine Albright: Coronavirus Should Be a Wake-Up Call for World Leaders to Work Together.
The coronavirus that now poses a dire threat to public health and to the world economy is so dangerous partly because it is novel—a new harm that our bodies and our governments must learn to face. But it is also a reminder of a lesson we should have learned long ago: that, to thrive, people of every nationality must combine strengths. We have been taught this lesson over and over again through history, only to forget when our tribal instincts resurface and wisdom is lost.
Look around: where are the leaders who will remind us of our mutual obligations and shared fate? In Moscow? Beijing? London? Rome? Paris? New Delhi? Ankara? In Berlin, Chancellor Merkel is on the way out. That leaves Washington. Read more.
March 20 DIGITAL
Aspen Digital: Infodemic: Half-Truths, Lies, and Critical Information in a Time of Pandemics.
As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, so does misinformation — thwarting efforts to control the disease and risking lives. In this webinar, Dr. Claire Wardle, a leading expert on content verification, outlines the global trends around information flows and the coronavirus. What misinformation is spreading? How is accurate information being shared? How are newsrooms, health authorities, platforms and businesses responding? During this unprecedented emergency, are we prepared for the impact of rumors and falsehoods that could have serious consequences?
Claire is joined by CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan who covers the intersection of technology and politics, and investigates online disinformation campaigns. Aspen Institute Digital Executive Director Vivian Schiller moderates. Watch here …