The Edmond J. Safra Center at Harvard University has convened a rapid response initiative in response to the COVID-19 threat.

The initiative will bring scholarship to bear on the crisis by providing an avenue for swift dissemination of white papers focused on issues of ethics and governance (including of the economy), emerging from the effort to respond to the pandemic. This cross-disciplinary, rapid peer-review process aims to undo the disconnect among lawmakers, technical experts, bureaucracy, and the general public. White papers will engage topics of societal goals, education, the economy, the health system, the temporality of planning, triage in the justice system, volunteerism, and social solidarity. 

We share these materials broadly and publicly in the hopes of encouraging wide engagement in supporting our elected decision-makers in this urgent and difficult period of collective planning.

We are excited to hear your ideas too. If you have feedback or are interested in working on a white paper, please get in touch with series editors Danielle Allen (danielleallen@fas.harvard.edu) and Josh Simons (joshua_simons@g.harvard.edu).

Our first white paper, “Securing Justice, Health and Democracy against COVID-19,” was published on Friday, March 20. There is an accompanying op-ed in the Washington Post and a brief NPR conversation. Here are the links:

The white paper can be found here.

The Washington Post op-ed can be found here.

The NPR segment can be found here.

Please check our COVID-19 Response page for future white papers and associated publications from this working group.