Unfiltered, Candid, and Interdisciplinary: Reflections on the ‘Human values and global response in the Covid-19 pandemic’ 2022 Tanner Lectures
- Clare Hall Tanner Lecture Working Group
- Nov 22, 2022
- 20 min read
Updated: Mar 11
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are prestigious gatherings of globally renowned scholars across the humanities and the sciences. This year’s lectures addressed the questions of Providing for a nation’s health, in a global context, where philosophers, economists, a physician and a social psychologist offered their take on different aspects of the healthcare response to global pandemics. In this piece, students, research fellows, and visiting fellows currently at Clare Hall, Cambridge provide their individual and distinct reflections on the lectures. They highlight a continual need for openness and multi-disciplinary engagement surrounding complex, global, and often polarising issues. The reflections presented herein reflect the views and ideas of scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and healthcare professionals from diverse backgrounds and nationalities. Beyond sharing these different and complementary perspectives, we aim to promote diverse, informative and welcoming forums for scholarly engagement in the pressing global issues of our time.
Introduction
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values[1] were founded in July 1978 at Clare Hall, Cambridge, by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner. His hope was to foster a legacy of lectures which ‘will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind’. Tanner stated: ‘I see them simply as a search for a better understanding of human behaviour and human values. This understanding may be pursued for its own intrinsic worth, but it may also eventually have practical consequences for the quality of personal and social life’. The Tanner Lectures are financed by an endowment, and other gifts, donated to the University of Utah exclusively for this purpose. Permanent lectureship has only been granted to eight other universities outside Cambridge. Outstanding scholars or leaders in broadly defined fields of human values—which transcend ethnic, national, religious, or ideological distinctions—are recognized and honoured through the invitation. Their lectures are also published as a written version of their presentation.
This year’s Tanner Clare Hall lectures[2] invited presenters to discuss broad philosophical, financial, political, and artistic aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The two evenings featured six speakers from various disciplines. During the first evening, Professor Allen Buchanan, an American philosopher, was invited to speak on ‘The relationship between national and global health’. His presentation covered several areas, including how one defines ‘crisis’, when it is ongoing, as was the case for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Two responses to his presentation followed, and were delivered by Cécile Fabre, Oxford Professor of Political Philosophy and Senior Research Fellow in Politics, who addressed moral duty and how it might be sustained, and by Sir Paul Tucker, a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, who commented on public health governance and its financing. For the second evening’s topic, ‘The consequences for healthcare practice, globally’, the invited speakers preferred a less hierarchical order of presenters and shared equal ‘rank’. Oxford’s Professor Trish Greenhalgh pleaded for the prudence and prevention masks offered; Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins, the British Academy’s Global Professor at University College, London, provided a compelling and colourful portrait of pandemic realities and resilience strategies in Ghana and other African countries; and Alexander Bird, Cambridge’s Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, contrasted and compared the costs approved and disbursed by the NHS in ‘standard’ cases with those associated with Covid-19 expenses in this pandemic.
