Category: Academic Views

Who are we trading off? Considerations for Singapore’s post-pandemic social compact

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Chong Ja Ian, Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar 2019-2020, argues that the pandemic reveals the need for Singapore to reconsider how it makes decisions about national directions and policy trade-offs. (Banner photo credit: Sumita Thiagarajan) Singapore’s state-affiliated mainstream media has lately been publishing pieces relating to inequality. Undoubtedly, this has to do with the disproportionate economic […]

2020-04-23

After the fever: Placing Singapore in the post-pandemic world

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Chong Ja Ian, Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar 2019-2020, considers the external political environment that Singapore will face in light of the pandemic. As Singapore grapples with increasing COVID-19 infections and their consequences, a post-pandemic world awaits. This environment will differ from the one we all left behind in 2019 and the shifts will not only be economic. […]

2020-04-21

COVID-19’s implications for Singapore’s future economy

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Linda Lim, Professor Emerita at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, considers future directions for Singapore’s economy, including the need to reconsider existing approaches and reorient to a likely increasingly deglobalized world. My recent commentary in the Straits Times discussed how the world and national economies are likely to change as […]

2020-04-13

In this zombie apocalypse, your homework is due at 5pm

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Teo You Yenn is Associate Professor, Provost’s Chair, and Head of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University. This week marks the beginning of the shutdown of schools and childcare centres in Singapore. All over the island, in households with children, adults are no doubt struggling to maintain some semblance of normalcy in abnormal times. Fixed timetables; […]

2020-04-09
Construction workers

Protecting the precarious: COVID-19 and migrant workers

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Laavanya Kathiravelu, assistant professor at NTU, has been researching the lives of low-wage migrant workers for more than a decade and sits on the board of HOME (Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics). Here she examines how migrants’ needs during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been adequately addressed. Across the world, the coronavirus outbreak has made […]

2020-04-08
The back of a Singapore poll card

Voting in a time of coronavirus: Discretion, the better part of valor

Academic Views, Coronavirus

Chong Ja Ian, Harvard-Yenching Institute Visiting Scholar 2019-2020, discusses the risks—from both public health and other perspectives—of holding a General Election when COVID-19 remains at large. Without a doubt, Singapore is in an extraordinary situation. It faces an ongoing pandemic, as does much of the world. Beyond disease control, there will be the challenges of responding […]

2020-03-21