A discussion of Andrew Lakoff's new book, Planning for the Wrong Pandemic: Covid-19 and the Limits of Expert Knowledge (Polity Press, 2024). The author will be joined in conversation by David Jones (Harvard University) and Manjari Mahajan (The New School), moderated by Laura Ferguson (USC). Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: The fractious and disorganized governmental response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States prompted many observers to ask why the country ‒ which had the knowledge, resources, and plans to deal with such an event ‒ was caught so unprepared when the crisis struck. In fact, as Andrew Lakoff shows, US officials had been planning for a pandemic for more than two decades, and many of these plans were implemented in the early stages of the pandemic. As authorities responded to the crisis, they relied on an already formulated set of concepts and tools that had been devised for managing a future emergency. These preexisting tools enabled officials to make sense of the event and to rapidly implement policies in response, but they also led to significant blind spots. What did these planning tools allow officials to see, and what did they hide from view? And, as we assess the failures in our response to the pandemic and attempt to prepare for “the next one,” to what extent should we take for granted the capacity of these tools to guide future interventions effectively? MORE

About the Author: Andrew Lakoff is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency (University of California Press, 2017), as well as an editor of Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices (Duke University Press, 2006), Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question (Columbia University Press, 2008), and Disaster and the Politics of Intervention (Columbia University Press, 2010).

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.

Questions? Contact the Levan Institute at usclevan@usc.edu