Dear Friends,
 
I hope this note finds you and your loved ones healthy and safe.

Like everyone else in the world, we at Columbia World Projects are adjusting to life in a pandemic. We have all been working remotely for some weeks. Our students, in effect, are the Obama Foundation Scholars, and they are finishing their time with us virtually, in most cases after having returned early to their home countries. All of our public events have been postponed, and our convenings have gone virtual. We held our first one on Friday via Zoom, in partnership with the newly-established New York City Civic Engagement Commission. We brought together experts from the university, civil society, philanthropy and the private sector to explore how digital tools might connect New York City residents to city government—a goal that is especially urgent in our current situation. Our planned Forum on aging has been postponed until the fall. In the meantime we are planning a nearer-term Forum on aspects of the coronavirus. We have adjusted our projects that are already out in the field to account for restrictions on travel and on face-to-face contact. We are looking forward to the day when we can resume normal operations.
 
We also, however, take this crisis as an opportunity to reaffirm our mission. Three years ago, when Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger announced his intention to launch Columbia World Projects, he wrote:
 
 “The extraordinary developments in recent decades of greater and greater interconnectedness—through increased economic activity, digital communications, and movements of peoples (both involuntary and voluntary)—have created or accelerated highly complex problems, and have given rise to political movements favoring a reversal or change of course. But the world lacks the public goods—the institutions, leadership, and knowledge—needed to address these conflicts and human needs.”
 
It would be hard to think of a more perfect example of the kind of highly complex problem President Bollinger was thinking of than the one that is absorbing the attention of the world right now. This pandemic was produced in part by the world’s greatly increased interconnectedness, especially the free movement of people and physical objects, and the infrastructure that dealing with it requires clearly isn’t in place. The problems won’t end with the pandemic itself: There will be enormous longer-term economic and political consequences after the immediate public health crisis has ended. The benefits of the free flow of information and global cooperation—especially in scientific research—have been obvious and essential in this crisis, as they are to our work at Columbia World Projects. The challenge is finding ways to limit the dangers of the twenty-first century world without losing its advantages.
 
By looking for connections between different fields at a great research university, we can help craft responses that encompass all the aspects of the crisis. By looking also for ways in which university research can be quickly and practically brought out into the world in order to benefit people, we can help produce tangible improvements. We are actively trying to do all that in the case of the coronavirus, and this spirit animates all our work, now with a renewed sense of urgency.

Nicholas Lemann
Director
Columbia World Projects