N‘Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba

Professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center

N‘Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba has worked in, and traveled to, more than 50 countries in North and South America, the Caribbean, Asia and Europe and throughout the African continent where she is familiar with social contexts and is involved with institution building and social transformation. She is available for interviews about the implications of COVID-19 in Africa and its aftermath in rethinking global inter-dependence and common humanity.

Christopher Barrett

Professor of Applied Economics and Policy

Christopher Barrett is an agricultural and development economist whose research centers around poverty, food insecurity and environmental stress in the developing world. He can comment on how COVID-19 will impact low-income countries and the global South. He says that in many of those countries, formal sector employment is too modest to enable governments to simply support businesses’ payrolls, as many European governments and the U.S. are doing. But governments and charitable organizations have other tools to limit the damage and speed recovery once health systems prove able to manage the virus.

Kaushik Basu

Professor of Economics and International Studies

Kaushik Basu is a former chief economist of the World Bank and former chief economic advisor to the Indian government. Basu has argued that a far-reaching global crisis demands a comprehensive global response. About India, he says that the government needs to reach out to migrant laborers.

Alexandra Cirone

Assistant Professor in the Department of Government

Alexandra Cirone, professor in the department of government and an expert in European politics, can talk about the EU response to the coronavirus crisis, with a particular focus on the U.K. She has been following news of the British prime minister's worsening condition and says that Boris Johnson's hospitalization poses the question of what an emergency leadership selection would look like for U.K.’s Conservative Party.

Sarah Davidson Evanega

International Professor of Plant Breeding & Genetics

Sarah Evanega serves as director for the Cornell Alliance for Science, a global communications effort that promotes evidence-based decision-making in agriculture. Her expertise spans agricultural biotechnology to plant molecular biology to science communication. She is available for interviews on global food security issues and the spread of misinformation surrounding food and agriculture.

Gustavo A. Flores-Macías

Professor of Government

The number of coronavirus infections is growing rapidly in Latin America, an area that initially seemed to have escaped the virus. Gustavo Flores-Macias, professor of government and an expert on the political economy of the region, is available for interviews on the political, social, and economic consequences of the pandemic in Latin America.

Nicholas Mulder

Assistant Professor in the Department of History

Nicholas Mulder studies modern European history with a focus on war and internationalism. He is available for interviews about the European response to coronavirus and says that while the tools at hand to ease the economic crisis in Europe are not new, the shock the entire continent currently faces is unprecedented. 

Jaron Porciello

Information scientist and faculty fellow at the David R. Atkinson Center for Sustainable Development

Jaron Porciello is co-director of Ceres2030, an initiative working to end hunger and transform the lives of the world’s poorest farmers while protecting the environment. She is available for interviews on global food security, the use of machine learning to speed decision-making on issues related to food and agriculture, and open data-sharing policies/data governance.

Rachel Beatty Riedl

Professor of International Studies, Director of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

An expert on governance and politics with a regional focus in Sub-Saharan Africa, Rachel Beatty Riedl can weigh in on what Ebola has taught us in terms of health care and community response across Africa. In addition Riedl can speak to the use of emergency measures to curb democratic rights in countries with autocratic regimes. In already unstable gerontocracies, she says, the longer term consequences of this pandemic could lead to public unrest and regime change through military coup.

Kenneth Roberts

Professor of Government

Kenneth Roberts studies comparative and Latin American politics, with an emphasis on the political economy of development and the politics of inequality. His research is devoted to the study of political parties, populism, and labor and social movements. He can comment on Latin American responses to the virus and its impact on the region.

Kristin Roebuck

Assistant Professor of History

Japan, a country with an abysmal domestic violence record, declared a state of emergency on April 6. Kristin Roebuck, assistant professor in the department of history at Cornell University, studies modern Japan with a focus on the history of medicine and law, race and sexuality and Japanese international relations. She can discuss how the emergency measures are likely to affect vulnerable populations, who feel least safe at home.

Nicolas van de Walle

Professor of Government

Nicolas van de Walle studies the political economy of development, with a special focus on Africa; on democratization, and on the politics of economic reform. He can discuss how the epidemic is affecting countries in Africa, their societies and political environments.