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On October 30, 2021, Adil Najam<\/a>, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, gave a keynote address at a conference on \u201cThe Post-COVID Political Agenda<\/a>\u201d organized by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, Spain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Najam\u2019s remarks were based on the lessons he learn from the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future<\/a>‘s “World After Coronavirus<\/a>” video series,<\/span> which featured leading experts and practitioners from Boston University and across the world were featured as they explored the challenges and opportunities we will face in our post-coronavirus future.<\/span> Najam looked back at the results and lessons garnered from the project in light of events since then and the emerging trends that have evolved in different parts of the world, including in Europe. He highlighted that COVID has alerted us to constantly interrogate the meaning of \u2018normal\u2019 and that the world before COVID was itself full of challenges and turmoil that have, in many cases, taken on new dimensions because of the pandemic. He noted that much of the political stress within societies that we see today is not just related to the virus but is also related to the uncertainties that our search for a \u2018new normal\u2019 has created. \u201cCrisis,\u201d he said, \u201calways comes with uncertainty and with the reorganization of power balances, and that is what the post-COVID political agenda is grappling with at every level of society \u2013 from the individual to the global.\u201d<\/p>\n Najam also looked at the specific example of climate change as a \u201ccrisis waiting to happen.” On this, he stated, \u201cthe good news is that COVID demonstrated that once people actually believe that a crisis is truly existential for them the science happens and the money suddenly appears. But the bad news is that it is clear that despite the slogans from leaders as well as activists, the noise about climate change is mostly just that: noise.\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting was opened by Andoni Ortuzar, the President of the Basque Nationalist Part, and was attended by policy leaders, academics, and civil society from across the Basque region of Spain. Earlier delegates were welcomed by Mireia Zarate, the Chairperson of the Sabino Arana Foundazioa. Other speakers included Carlos Mataix from the University of Madrid, Ainhoa Novo from the University of the Basque Country, Ion Munoa from Deustro University, and Mikel Mancisidor from the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Details of the conference can be found on the Sabino Arana Foundation’s website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Adil Najam<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is a global public policy expert who also served as the Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan. He is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Dean Najam on his\u00a0<\/span>faculty profile<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drawing on lessons learned from the Pardee Center’s “World After Coronavirus” series, Dean Najam highlighted that COVID has alerted us to constantly interrogate the meaning of \u2018normal\u2019 and that the world before COVID was itself full of challenges and turmoil that have, in many cases, taken on new dimensions because of the pandemic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17823,"featured_media":51048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8411],"tags":[11784,1720,509,8535,11583,10804,11651],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17823"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51047"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51050,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51047\/revisions\/51050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}