Being a Collective Jeremiah: The Academic Responsibility to Clarify How Not All Is Well

Borgman, Erik

COVID-19 has been frequently described as a great equalizer. The reality, however, is that long-standing inequities have been further exacerbated. The result is a lack of presence of a lot of stories on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on societies and people. Thus speaks the website of Voice of Witness (https://voiceofwitness.org/unheard-voices-of-the-pandemic/, 2020), a San Francisco based organization with a mission to advance human rights “by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice.” For obvious reasons, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public attention went almost exclusively to saving lives and overcoming problems in doing so. As a result, people felt their souls were left behind in the limbo of uncertainty without accompaniment. In this short chapter, the starting point of Voice of Witness is taken: an understanding of any crucial issue is incomplete without deep listening and learning from people who have experienced it firsthand.