SGISD’s Dr. Meghan Kallman featured on Future Tense radio segment

Professor Meghan Kallman was interviewed by archeologist and critic Chris Begley on Eastern Standard’s Future Tense, a radio segment that focuses on the future of our post-COVID pandemic world.

Dr. Kallman, Rhode Island State Senator and Assistant Professor of International Development at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, shared her feelings about the state of climate change, housing, jobs, health care, and the role of government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Kallman acknowledged how COVID has exposed and exacerbated so many risks that we already knew existed in our communities, and how effective governance requires some consensus of the issues at hand.

Meghan also shared about her experience a professor during the pandemic:

“The isolation for [my students], coupled with the fear, the political unrest of last fall and January 6 — it was a lot. And to be deprived of the human connection that makes that stuff bearable? In most crises, humans are able to turn toward each other…but one of the things that is so hard about COVID is that the thing we normally turn to help see ourselves through terrible times was unavailable to us…and I think that left a lot of people really adrift.”

Listen to Dr. Kallman’s full interview on Future Tense with archeologist Chris Begley.

Learn more about Dr. Kallman’s work by checking out her book, The Death of Idealism: Development and Anti-Politics in the Peace Corps published by Columbia University Press. Stay tuned for her upcoming book, Building Something Better: Environmental Crises and the Promise of Community Change, which will be released this April.