Join the School of Professional Studies for a discussion about COVID-19 with reporters from the New York Times. Tuesday April 21 - Distrusting Science: How We Got This Pandemic with Naomi Oreskes. Over the last twenty years, Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, has been writing widely read books about the political consequences of distorting scientific knowledge.
Dr. Oreskes' best-seller, "Merchants of Doubt," co-authored with Erik M. Conway showed how a group of prestigious researchers misled the public on the dangers of smoking to further an anti-regulation and anti-government political agenda. Her most recent work, "Why Trust Science?" was written as a response to the growing impact of climate change deniers and anti-vaccine activists. Published by Princeton University Press before the CoVid-19 pandemic took hold, Dr. Oreskes warned of the dangers of an increasing public distrust of science. How much of the current pandemic can be attributed to this distrust of the knowledge of experts? What can the scientific community do to counter the false information spread by some political leaders and by some among the citizenry?
Naomi Oreskes will be interviewed by science journalist Claudia Dreifus, an instructor in the Masters of Sustainability Management program at the Columbia University School of Professional Studies and an adjunct professor of Technology and Media at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. She is the political and cultural interviewer of the New York Review of Books, The Daily. A live stream link will be sent 48 hours prior to the event. For questions, please contact Samantha Ostrowski, Interim Assistant Director, Graduate Programs in Sustainability Management and Science, at [email protected].
Columbia University makes every effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend an event at Columbia University, please contact Disability Services ([email protected] or 212-854-2388) at least 10 days in advance of the event. Requests for CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) or sign language interpretation require two weeks' notice.
