WEBINAR: What Does the Coronavirus Pandemic Teach us about Democracy and Authoritarianism? with Dr Nader Hashemi
Date: Thursday, 2nd April 2020
Time: 10AM MYT | 2AM UTC | 8PM Denver (1st April 2020)
Organized by: Islamic Renaissance Front & Islam & Liberty Network
The Coronavirus pandemic has rocked our world. 30,000 people have been killed (10,000 in Italy alone) and the number of known infections is approaching 1 million. The global economy is facing a recession, international travel has come to a standstill, millions of people have lost their jobs and most governments have ordered their citizens to stay at home. International attention is now exclusively focused on this expanding crisis, which most experts believe is still in its early phase with the worst yet to come.
This pandemic raises many important questions. How did we get to this moment of crisis? Why was the world so colossally unprepared? Are some governments more to blame than others for the spread of this virus and critically, are democracies better equipped than authoritarian regimes in meeting the challenges of a pandemic?
Nader Hashemi, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies will discuss this topic, with special attention to how Muslim societies have been effected by this crisis. He will also answer your questions.
About the Author
Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute. His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor ofThe People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013) and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, Pacifica Radio and the BBC and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera Online, CNN.com among other media outlets.
Program
1000-1015AM: Introduction by the Moderator, Ehsan Shahwahid
1015-1100AM: Presentation by Dr Nader Hashemi
1100-1145AM: Discussion
1145-1200PM: Concluding remarks by Ali Salman, CEO, Islam & Liberty Network