March 27, 2020 by
Jovana Jankovic - A&S News
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect our community and the world, scholars from a range of disciplines across the Faculty of Arts & Science are sharing their expertise on pressing issues in the media — from border closures to job losses to a lack of trust in scientific expertise.
Here’s what A&S scholars had to say this past week:
March 26, 2020
- Professor Nelson Wiseman of the Department of Political Science comments on Donald Trump’s decision to station troops at the Canada-U.S. border in an article in the Washington Post (paywall).
March 25, 2020
- Rafael Gomez, associate professor and director of the Centre for Industrial Relations & Human Resources, comments on the importance of essential labourers — healthcare workers, grocery store employees, delivery people, sanitary cleaners — during the pandemic on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today.
March 24, 2020
- Marzyeh Ghassemi, an assistant professor of Computer Science and Medicine and expert in machine learning in the healthcare sector, remarks on the role artificial intelligence can play in predicting the spread of COVID-19 in the Toronto Star (paywall).
- Christopher Parsons, senior research associate at the Citizen Lab in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, comments on mass surveillance and civil liberties during the pandemic in the Toronto Star. Parsons says there will be limitations if the government or law enforcement agencies decide to collect information from cellphones. “Most services and technologies of this nature haven’t been tested at this scale.”
March 23, 2020
- University Professor Mark Lautens of the Department of Chemistry writes an op-ed in the Toronto Star on harnessing the capacity of science and supporting diverse research initiatives to address emergency situations like the current pandemic. “We should maximize diversity in our research funding, in all its incarnations,” writes Lautens. “Perhaps most importantly by letting basic science and engineering stumble along and chase down the unknown.”
- Associate Professors Dionne Pohler and Rafael Gomez along with PhD student Kourtney Koebel — all from the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources — write about reducing the financial burden on unemployed people during the pandemic in the National Post. “A targeted income maintenance approach that is conditional on income — what we refer to as a ‘targeted basic income’ — meets the urgency of the current crisis,” write the authors.
- Rafael Gomez predicts the extent of job losses in Canada in the Toronto Star (paywall).
March 22, 2020
- Michael Sabia, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, writes an op-ed in the Globe and Mail about three crucial tests governments around the world face during the COVID-19 pandemic. Can governments keep their citizens safe? Can they stabilize their economies and support citizens facing financial difficulties during the pandemic? And finally, can they eventually successfully re-start their economies after this downturn?
March 20, 2020
- Professor Yashar Ganjali of the Department of Computer Science — a specialist in large-scale computer systems and networks — comments in CBC News Online about the strain that increased internet usage during the pandemic could have on telecommunications networks. Ganjali says internet users can expect “temporary disruptions in some services” due to higher volumes of traffic across networks.