Cornell University and Tsinghua University are cohosting this international seminar with papers exploring policy responses to COVID-19 from across the world. The papers are featured in a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, just published.

Special Issue on The COVID -19 Crisis: Policies, Outcomes, and Lesson Drawing, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 2021, 23 (2) https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcpa20/current

Dr. Xue Zhang (Global Dev) and Dr. Mildred Warner (City and Reg Planning and Global Dev) have a paper in this collection based on work supported by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences and Cornell Center for Inequality.

This seminar is funded in part by a Cornell China Center-East Asia Program grant.

Program (US Eastern Time)

8:30am-8:35am Introduction Welcome Remark Mildred Warner, Cornell University Introduction of the Program Zhilin LIU, Tsinghua University

8:35am-9:35am Session I - Crisis Agenda Setting and Inter-connectedness of Crisis and Non-Crisis Policy Making Moderator: Xue ZHANG, Cornell University COVID-19, federalism, and health care financing in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Presenter: Gregory MARCHILDON, University of Toronto, Canada Government-led or public-led? -- Chinese policy agenda setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Presenter: Yixin DAI, Tsinghua University, China Social safety nets and COVID-19 stay home orders across US states: A comparative policy analysis. Presenter: Mildred WARNER, Cornell University, USA

9:35am-9:40am Break (5 minutes)

9:40am-10:50am Session II – Politics of COVID-19 Responses: Partisanship, Inter-governmental Relationship, and State-Society Tension Moderator: Mildred WARNER, Cornell University Comparing motivations for including enforcement in US COVID-19 state executive orders. Presenters: Cali CURLEY, University of Miami, USA; Peter Stanley Federman, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), USA Multi-Level governance, policy coordination and subnational responses to COVID-19: Comparing China and the US. Presenter: Zhilin LIU, Tsinghua University, China Coordination and health policy responses to the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy and Spain Presenter: Paola MATTEI, University of Milan, Italy Community health workers as street-level quasi-bureaucrats in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The cases of Kenya and Thailand. Presenter: Tatchalerm SUDHIPONGPRACHA, Thammasat University, Thailand

10:50am-10:55am Break (5 minutes)

10:55am-12:05pm Session III – Categorizing and Contextualizing COVID-19 Responses: Looking Forward Moderator: Yixin DAI, Tsinghua University Culture, institution, and COVID-19 first response policy: A qualitative comparative analysis of thirty-one countries. Presenters: Bin CHEN, City University of New York, USA; Bo YAN, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China “Measuring the mix” of policy responses to COVID-19: Comparative policy analysis using topic modelling. Presenter: Nihit GOYAL, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands A cross-country comparison of fiscal policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Presenter: Can CHEN, Florida International University, USA Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and potential outcomes in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparing the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation, and the Slovak Republic Presenter: Juraj NEMEC, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

12:05pm-12:10pm Wrap Up Concluding Remarks:Iris GEVA-MAY, JCPA/ICPA-Forum Zhilin LIU, Tsinghua University

Climate change and environmental degradation is a threat for economic prosperity. In relation to its commitment to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, China is aiming to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. China is leading in renewable energy production figures. It is currently the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy and the largest domestic and outbound investor in renewable energy. At the same time, Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the largest of any country in the world both in production and consumption terms. This stems mainly from coal electricity generation, which represents 60 percent of power and mining.

Carbon neutrality refers to the elimination of carbon dioxide. China’s government supports R&D efforts for green technology innovation. A major challenge is the greening of China’s manufacturing system to create a more sustainable economy. International cooperation for the greater good of mitigating global warming is urgently needed and China’s green trajectory comes with both opportunities and challenges for the rest of the world.

What You’ll Learn:

China’s goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissionsChallenges and opportunities of green technologyInternational cooperation regarding Paris Agreement GoalsSpeakers:

Lourdes Casanova, Senior Lecturer, Director Emerging Markets InstituteHenri Li and Gari Xiao, Yingke Law FirmYan Chen, China International Capital Corporation (CICC)Crystal GENG, Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.Moderator: Ying Hua, Director, Cornell China CenterQ&A moderator: David (Wei) Wu, Executive Project Manager and AttorneyThis event is cosponsored by the Emerging Markets Institute, the Cornell China Center, and eCornell.

Event time:
8:00-9:30 am New York time
8:00-9:30 pm Beijing time

Registration link: https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/overview/K052021/

Registration link for attendees in China: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VZn0gi57Q3WQl_5J680zTA

(Attendees in China should register and attend through the Zoom link, as the eCornell platform may not work in China.)

The Einaudi Center’s global racial justice research team presents the inaugural session of Race Matters, a new webinar series that fosters in-depth conversations on colonial questions and racial justice across international relations.

This panel brings together global experts for a candid appraisal of disciplinary instruments (methods, archives, concepts, ontologies, and epistemologies) and institutions (practices of knowledge production and incorporation as policy). The debate centers the question: How effectively do our tools for producing and shaping knowledge and policy serve the cause of advancing racial equality and justice globally?

Some of the panelists critique methods and lines of inquiries in scholarship on race and racism. Others presume an insurgency by self-determining political communities—including in the academy­—against colonizing institutional practices and in favor of the expansion of archives and imaginaries.

This conversation represents an initial framing of questions and critiques that will continue in four additional Race Matters panels through the fall 2021 semester. Read more about the series below.

Moderator: Siba Grovogui, Africana Studies, Cornell University

Panelists:

Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller, and Aram Ziai, coeditors of Beyond the Master’s Tools? Decolonizing Knowledge Orders, Research Methods, and Teaching (2020)Mustapha K. Pasha, Meera Sabaratnam, and Robbie Shilliam, series editors of Kilombo: International Relations and Colonial QuestionsDiscussants: Oumar Ba, Political Science, Morehouse College; Sarah Then Bergh, Africana Studies PhD candidate, Cornell University

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Race Matters: A webinar series sponsored by Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Africana Studies and Research Center, and Department of Government

Race Matters brings together international relations experts for critical conversations on colonial questions and racial justice across international relations. Join us to explore scholarship on race and racism and the policies, institutions, and systems that perpetuate racial inequality and violence worldwide. Continuing throughout 2021, Race Matters will identify opportunities for transformative change and highlight collective and individual actions toward a more just world.

Learn about the Einaudi Center’s work on racial justice and all of our global research priorities.

Register now: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hYI75wwITDOvrOW_ZTHY6Q

The Korean Language Program at Cornell will proudly host its 12th annual showcase, funded by the Joh Foundation. Selected student group works from 6 different courses and a special performance from Shimtah (Korean percussion) will be presented. Excellent students will be acknowledged with achievement certificates and gift cards. This cultural event is free of charge and open to the Cornell Community. Please feel free to invite your friends and family to this wonderful virtual event.

Join us for an interactive teach-in and listen-in on the history and experience of anti-Asian racism in the United States and at Cornell University. Register here.

In the first hour, perspectives and presentations from Cornell students, staff, and faculty will highlight the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States as well as the diversity of experiences at Cornell. Participants will hear about the connections and divisions under the very broad labels of “Asian” and “Asian American” and explore ways to speak across these differences.

Speakers:

Christine Bacareza Balance, Associate Professor of Performing and Media ArtsDerek Chang, Associate Professor of HistoryAvery August, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Professor of Immunology Nancy Martinsen, Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Asian and Asian American CenterPanelists:

Huili Grace Xing, William L Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of EngineeringReanna Esmail, Outreach and Engagement Librarian at Olin Library and the library liaison to the Latinx Studies Program and the Asian American Studies ProgramJeannie Yamazaki, undergraduate student in Environment and Sustainability and EducationAnthony Chen, undergraduate student in Information Science and Sociology, minor in Asian American StudiesChristopher Berardino, dual MFA/Ph.D. candidate in EnglishRazima Chowdhury, Senior Lecturer, Asian StudiesThe panel moderated by Wendy Wolford, Vice Provost for International Affairs, Professor of Global Development

In the second hour, participants will meet in small breakout groups to freely express their views and generate concrete ideas in an anonymous setting (zoom profiles will be anonymized). These breakout rooms are an opportunity to set the agenda for further related programming on campus during the next academic year and beyond. Facilitated by the Intergroup Dialogue Project and Durba Ghosh, Professor of History.

This event has been co-organized with faculty and staff from the Asian and Asian American Center (A3C), Asian American Studies Program, Asian Studies, Global Cornell, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (including EAP, SAP, and SEAP), Graduate School, and Office of Faculty Development and Diversity.

The EastAsia+ Initiative presents a talk by Thomas Lamarre on television, anime infrastructures, and new formations of media power. Across these two lines of inquiry, Lamarre aims to delineate both an ecological approach to media and a physiology of power, which might open a transformation in our media sensibility.

Abstract: One of the current trends in media studies is to make visible the massive built environments and intendant ecological destruction that subtend telecommunications infrastructures, which remain invisible or “thin” for users. Another trend concerns the symbolic function of infrastructure, a symbol of modernity, or state power, or both. I propose to complement these approaches with a more micropolitical perspective on infrastructure that brings questions of subjectivity and sensibility to the fore. On the one hand, I will explore what the 1997 Pokemon incident tells us about television infrastructures and new formations of media power. On the other hand, I wish to show how this formation of power presents a profound challenge to the received wisdom about environments and media (and the associated legacy of cybernetic thinking). Across these two lines of inquiry, I aim to delineate both an ecological approach to media and a physiology of power, which might open a transformation in our media sensibility.

Bio: Thomas Lamarre (he/him/his) teaches in Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Publications on media, thought, and material history include work on communication networks in 9th century Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan, 2000); silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen, 2005); animation technologies (The Anime Machine, 2009) and infrastructure ecologies (The Anime Ecology, 2018). Major translations include Kawamata Chiaki’s Death Sentences (2012), Muriel Combes’s Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (2012), and David Lapoujade’s William James, Empiricism, and Pragmatism (2019).

Presented by EastAsia+, a new initiative at Cornell that combines programming, mentorship, and (digital) publishing around East Asian media studies. EastAsia+ is a collective of scholars, publishing professionals, librarians, curators, and graduate students dedicated to exploring new possibilities for academic publishing, networking, and collaboration in East Asia media studies and digital humanities research.

EastAsia+ is generously supported by funding from Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities.