Faculty Writing: Right-Wing Climate Realism, the Politics of Antibody Testing, and the Inequality of of Digital Health

In The Baffler, Ajay Singh Chaudhary explains the “ecological-economic-political matrix” of climate disaster and increasing privatization: “Actually Existing Capitalism runs on stress and stressors, social and ecological. Ecological sustainability, a socioecological flourishing for the vast majority, for the many, requires addressing such stressors—such exhaustion—across ecological, economic, social, and political systems, otherwise the overall project is an unstable, and—in terms of maintaining a niche capable of such flourishing—unsustainable shell-game.”

For The New Republic, Joe Osmundson discusses the benefits and dangers of antibody testing in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic: “[A] pandemic is not an excuse for authoritarian surveillance of our bodies and health. We know surveillance will impact vulnerable populations the most: Black and brown New Yorkers, infected with Covid-19 at the highest rates, would therefore be the most surveilled communities. The question becomes how to trace at-risk individuals and populations without inviting a police state.”

In Public Books, Danya Glabau discusses digital health apps, data harvesting, and the re-entrenchment of gender and racial inequality: “Digital-health tools today promise quick technological fixes for deep social problems but ultimately leave those problems untouched.”