Author: TheConversation

By Maureen Ferran, Associate Professor of Biology, Rochester Institute of Technology The world now has a new COVID-19 vaccine in its arsenal, and at a fraction of the cost per dose. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has seen over 314 million infections and over 5.5 million deaths worldwide. Approximately 60% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. But there is still a glaring and alarming gap in global access to these vaccines. As a virologist who has followed this pandemic closely, I contend that this vaccine inequity should be...

By Jennifer Rich, Professor of Sociology, Rowan University Each year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex in Poland, an International Day of Commemoration memorializes the victims of the Holocaust. This somber day focuses on the destruction the Nazis and their collaborators inflicted on Jewish communities throughout Europe. But there is another way to honor those 6 million murdered: remembering the ways they lived, not only the ways they died. I am a sociologist who focuses on Holocaust memory and education. My interest is both professional and personal – my grandparents were Holocaust...

By Ted Lechterman, Research Fellow, University of Oxford How should wealthy people respond to daunting problems like racism, economic inequality and climate change? Leading thinkers have long questioned whether philanthropy offers appropriate or meaningful solutions to vexing challenges. Eighteenth-century philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft called private giving “the most specious system of slavery.” Wollstonecraft saw charitable and philanthropic efforts as softening the effects of unjust laws and political institutions – rather than dismantling them. A century later, the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde argued that private giving “creates a multitude of sins.” Wilde thought that charity “degrades and demoralizes” while preventing...

By Kelley Fanto Deetz, Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley Located on nearly 2,000 acres along the banks of the Potomac River, Stratford Hall Plantation is the birthplace of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and the home of four generations of the Lee family, including two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee. It was also the home of hundreds of enslaved Africans and African Americans. From sunup to sundown, they worked in the fields and in the Great House. Until fairly recently, the stories of these enslaved Africans and of their brothers...