Abstract
This paper argues that the coterminous trends of post-liberalism’s shifting global power relations and right wing populism (RWP) have been apparent in the persistent attacks on the World Health Organisation, controversies over the SARS-CoV-2 name, and other forms of disinformation during the current pandemic. Scientific expertise and technocratic knowledge have been diminished in a cacophony of political blaming and posturing, exposing once again the entangled nature of science and politics. It is critical for science education to consider this perspective given its central role in the production of future science and medical professionals able to navigate highly charged and contested political spaces.
Highlights
What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet
One of the images that I have found most telling during this pandemic was of Donald Trump’s notes for his coronavirus task force press conference of March 19th, 2020 with the word ‘corona’ crossed out and replaced with the word ‘Chinese.’ Trump’s increasingly anti-Chinese rhetoric was subsequently amplified by various media outlets including Fox News and the far right Epoch Times, employing terms like the ‘Wuhan virus’ and the ‘CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.’
On April 13th, 2020, Trump announced the suspension of US funding to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for being “very China centric,” and “for severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”
Summary
One of the images that I have found most telling during this pandemic was of Donald Trump’s notes for his coronavirus task force press conference of March 19th, 2020 with the word ‘corona’ crossed out and replaced with the word ‘Chinese.’ Trump’s increasingly anti-Chinese rhetoric was subsequently amplified by various media outlets including Fox News and the far right Epoch Times, employing terms like the ‘Wuhan virus’ and the ‘CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.’ A few days after Trump’s address, the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting on March 25th, 2020 failed to agree to a joint communiqué owing to the US State Department’s pressure to include the phrase ‘Wuhan virus,’ and statements blaming China for the pandemic's spread. The coterminous trends of post-liberalism’s shifting power relations and the rise of right wing populism (RWP) offer some explanation, I believe, as to why scientific expertise and technocratic knowledge has been diminished in a cacophony of political posturing and blaming Developing this argument requires a more detailed political discussion — in this case, genealogy — than is usual in science education scholarship, but finds support in the 2021American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting theme requiring political literacy to better understand the interplay between our scholarship and societies (AERA, 2020). I finish with some comments on the effects of these trends for science education though its early days in these fluid spaces
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