Faculty Research Fellow Neta Crawford Co-Authors Op-Ed on Coronavirus Response in The Hill

Neta C. Crawford, Professor and Chair of the BU Department of Political Science and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, recently co-authored an op-ed in The Hill comparing the coronavirus response to fighting a war.

In the article, titled “Fighting a virus with the wrong tools,”  Prof. Crawford and Prof. Catherine Lutz, co-founders and co-directors of the Costs of War project, argue that “war” is not an appropriate metaphor for the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“[E]quating a ‘determined, coordinated national response’ with war mobilization, rather than with community care, is precisely the problem. In fact, part of the reason we’re in this predicament is that we hollowed out America’s public health system in favor of military spending,” they write. “America isn’t ready for this pandemic because our government has been spending money on the wrong things. Instead of putting money towards fighting disease or alleviating suffering, the U.S. spent enormous sums over the past couple of decades on war and war preparation.”

Read the full article here.

The Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs was founded in 2010 to explore the human, financial, environmental, social, and political costs of the post-9/11 wars. In October 2019, the Pardee Center launched a new collaboration with the Watson Institute called 20 Years of War: A Costs of War Research Series to expand the project with a new set of analyses to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the post-9/11 wars.