In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us

CSDP American Politics Colloquium with Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee
Date
Oct 3, 2024, 12:00 pm1:30 pm
Audience
Other

Details

Event Description

The Covid pandemic quickly led to the greatest mobilization of emergency powers in human history. By early April 2020, half the world’s population—3.9 billion people—were living under quarantine. People were told not to leave their homes; businesses were shuttered, employees laid off, and schools closed for months or even years. The most devastating pandemic in a century and the policies adopted in response to it upended life as we knew it. In this eye-opening book, Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee examine our pandemic response and pose some provocative questions: Why did we ignore pre-Covid plans for managing a pandemic? Were the voices of reasonable dissent treated fairly? Did we adequately consider the costs and benefits of different policy options? And, aside from vaccines, did the policies adopted work as intended?

With “In Covid’s Wake,” Macedo and Lee offer the first comprehensive—and candid—political assessment of how our institutions fared during the pandemic. They describe how, influenced by Wuhan’s lockdown, governments departed from their existing pandemic plans. Hard choices were obscured by slogans like “follow the science.” The policies adopted largely benefited the laptop class and left so-called essential workers unprotected; the benefits and harms were distributed unfairly. Extended school closures hit the least-privileged families the hardest. Science became politicized and dissent was driven to the margins. In the next crisis, Macedo and Lee warn, we must not forget the deepest values of liberal democracy: tolerance and open-mindedness, respect for evidence and its limits, a willingness to entertain uncertainty, and a commitment to telling the whole truth.

This event is open to Princeton University faculty, fellows, and graduate students only.

UCHV sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of the program, speakers, or views presented.

Speaker Bios

Stephen Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is the author of “Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage,” “Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy,” and “Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism.” 

Frances Lee is professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. She is author of “Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign” and “Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate.”

Sponsors
  • Center for the Study of Democratic Politics
  • University Center for Human Values