Contemporary Security Policy

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COVID-19 and emergency eLearning:

Consequences of the securitization of higher
education for post-pandemic pedagogy

Michael P. A. Murphy

To cite this article: Michael P. A. Murphy (2020): COVID-19 and emergency eLearning:
Consequences of the securitization of higher education for post-pandemic pedagogy,
Contemporary Security Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2020.1761749

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Published online: 30 Apr 2020.

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CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2020.1761749

COVID-19 and emergency eLearning: Consequences

of the securitization of higher education for post-
pandemic pedagogy
Michael P. A. Murphy
School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly led to the closure of universities and colleges
around the world, in hopes that public health officials’ advice of social
distancing could help to flatten the infection curve and reduce total
fatalities from the disease. Drawing on Copenhagen school securitization
theory and analyzing 25 declarations of emergency eLearning at American
universities, I argue that in addition to COVID-19 being framed as a general
threat, face-to-face schooling was also presented as a threat through these
policies. A review of securitization theory—with particular attention to the
question of advocacy and the relationship of desecuritization to
emancipation—grounds the investigation theoretically. I argue that
securitization theory is an important tool for educators not only for
observing (and understanding) the phenomenon of emergency eLearning,
but also for advocating the desecuritization of schooling after the COVID-19
crisis passes.

KEYWORDS Securitization; COVID-19; state of exception; desecuritization; emancipation

Across the globe, the spread of novel coronavirus COVID-19 has led to
profound changes in social interaction and organization, and the education
sector has not been immune. While the primary student population (of
both K-12 and postsecondary education) appears to be at a lower mortality
risk category compared to older adults, pandemic precautions called “social
distancing” or “physical distancing” have attempted to reduce interpersonal
contact and thereby minimize the kind of community transmission that
could develop quickly in dense social networks like the university campus
(Weeden & Cornwell, 2020). Following the logic of the exception—that
extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures—one common trend
in education systems around the world has been to respond to the pan-
demic with “emergency eLearning” protocols, marking the rapid transition
of face-to-face classes to online learning systems.

CONTACT Michael P. A. Murphy michaelpa.murphy@uottawa.ca School of Political Studies,

University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. P. MURPHY

While public health officials largely agree that the general threat of
COVID-19 is best fought with measures of social distancing, the specific
acts of instituting emergency eLearning protocols do not alter the pandemic
itself, but only indirectly by limiting face-to-face classroom interactions. To
this end, I argue that there is an important opportunity for Copenhagen
school securitization theory to inform our observation of and advocacy
within the education sector during this critical time. A pandemic response
that securitizes face-to-face instruction may well be appropriate as a
measure to support broader social distancing, but there is a cost to removing
face-to-face education from the realm of normal discourse. eLearning compa-
nies and political commentators in favor of mandatory eLearning programs as
a means of public austerity have already sought to normalize emergency
eLearning protocols (e.g., Katzman in Blumenstyk, 2020; Lilley, 2020). If we
are to have any hope for an emancipatory post-pandemic pedagogy, we
require an open discourse unfathomable under conditions of securitization.
As I will argue through this article, the desecuritization of face-to-face school-
ing is imperative for the future possibility of emancipatory pedagogy, whether
face-to-face or online.
The article proceeds in four sections. The first outlines the classic Copen-
hagen school approach to securitization theory and the place of desecuritiza-
tion within the framework. The second section turns to the emergent medical
literature on COVID-19 to provide a background on what we know about the
pandemic, and why measures of social distancing are advised by the public
health community. The third section frames the responses of emergency
eLearning as a securitization of face-to-face schooling by examining shared
characteristics in declarations of Emergency eLearning among a sample of
25 American universities, as well as more in-depth analysis of comments
made by the presidents of Harvard and Yale, while the conclusion discusses
post-pandemic pedagogy and considers the utility of securitization theory
in educational contexts.

Securitization theory: A brief introduction

The classic form of Copenhagen school securitization theory identifies a suite
of key actors and factors centered on audience acceptance of a speech act. In
the first major articulation, Waever (1995) maps out a model where “in
naming a certain development a security problem, the ‘state’ can claim a
special right” (p. 54) to respond to the problem. That an issue is a security
issue is a matter of construction, as “the utterance is the primary reality”
(p. 55). A thing becomes a security issue when it securitized through a
speech act.
This securitization framework was outlined more systematically in the
magnum opus of the Copenhagen School (Buzan et al., 1998). The speech
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 3

act is clarified as an intersubjective construction, with two main parts. First,

there is the securitizing move, where the “threat” is presented as a security
threat by a “securitizing actor”—defined as “someone, or a group, who per-
forms the security speech act” (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 40)—and second,
there is the acceptance by an audience. Both parts must be fulfilled for a suc-
cessful securitization, and “the issue is only securitized if and when the audi-
ence accepts it as such” (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 25). Success in this case means
that the issue has been removed from the normal sphere of politics and—now
defined as a security issue—the securitizing actor may take “extraordinary
defensive moves” (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 204). Williams (2003) argues that
the removal of the securitized entity from the realm of normal politics
abides Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics and logic of the exception.1
This basic formula of (securitizing actor) + (securitizing move) + (audience
assent) = (successful securitization) captures the core argument of classic for-
mulations of Copenhagen School securitization theory. The removal of the
successfully securitized entity from the control of normal politics and
approval of extraordinary measures in response outline the Schmittian
stakes of securitization theory. As an analytical tool, Copenhagen school
securitization is powerful because it offers a simple model with wide applica-
bility (Salter, 2018)—including as this article will show in the area of higher
education (e.g., Collins, 2005; Durodie, 2016)—yet this same virtue of the fra-
mework has been criticized, including by “Paris School” approaches to secur-
itization, for oversimplifying the complex reality of security construction in
international politics.
Desecuritization describes the reverse process of securitization—taking an
issue from the heightened discourse of security and bringing back into the
space of political deliberation. Desecuritizing moves similarly require the
assent of a relevant audience, although this would often consist of the elite
group who had control over the security policy or an audience able to
influence that elite. Empirical studies of securitization and desecuritization
(e.g., Aras & Karakaya Polat, 2008; MacKenzie, 2009; Roe, 2004) have high-
lighted the analytical utility of desecuritization, while conceptual analyses
have theorized the relation between the two concepts (e.g., Austin & Beau-
lieu-Brossard, 2018; Hansen, 2012).
Yet desecuritization is often fraught with difficulties. Salter (2008a, p. 341),
for instance, notes in the case of Canadian aviation security debates, a dese-
curitizing move by scientific experts—because of the uncertainty of screening
and security, the policy decisions would be necessarily political rather than
neutral application of scientific principles and should therefore be subject
to political debate and accountability—failed because it did not convince its
relevant audiences. Even when successful, as Aradau argues (2004), desecur-
itization alone is insufficient and must be accompanied by a commitment to
emancipatory political discourse. If the project of critical politics is to succeed,
4 M. P. MURPHY

it requires first the removal from security discourse but also a firm commit-
ment to advocacy for political amelioration toward an emancipatory future.
In the case of emergency eLearning and the COVID-19 pandemic, the
argument in terms of securitization is that face-to-face classes was justly
securitized, and that the theory of securitization helps us to observe the dis-
cursive dynamics at play. But for there to be any possibility of emancipatory
post-pandemic pedagogy, the first step must be a concerted effort toward the
desecuritization of face-to-face schooling—recalling that these efforts are not
guaranteed to be successful without collective action—once the pandemic has
passed.

COVID-19: A pandemic primer

The COVID-19 pandemic grew quickly from its first emergence to a truly
global phenomenon. While the importance for the securitization of face-to-
face schooling lies in the social transmission of the virus, a brief review of
the rise of the virus provides context. The first reported illness onset date
for COVID-19 was December 1, 2019, and the first hospital intake date was
December 16, 2019 (Huang et al., 2020, p. 499). By December 30, 2019, a
cluster of pneumonia patients in Wuhan, China was reported to the World
Health Organization’s Beijing office (Guarner, 2020, p. 420). Clinical presen-
tations indicated a shared viral strain of pneumonia, which was named 2019-
nCoV, or 2019 novel coronavirus (Huang et al., 2020, p. 497). The following
day, an epidemiological alert was raised by local health authorities (Huang
et al., 2020, p. 498). Exactly one month after the viral pneumonia cluster
was recognized—just under two months after the first symptoms ever
caused by the virus—the World Health Organization declared a Public
Health Emergency of International Concern (Lai et al., 2020, p. 2), and on
March 11, 2020, a COVID-19 pandemic (World Health Organization,
2020).2 The rapidity of this spread can be understood by characteristics of
the virus itself.
COVID-19 has already far surpassed the number of total cases and fatal-
ities of its closest viral comparators, SARS and MERS. COVID-19 has a
lower incident rate of serious symptoms—mortality, for example, is estimated
around 2%, compared to 9.5% for SARS and 35% for MERS (Guarner,
2020)3—and while this results in a lower individual risk, there is a much
greater population-level risk due to infected individuals who are only mildly
symptomatic continuing about daily life (Munster et al., 2020, p. 694). This
threat is only increased with the potential for asymptomatic transmission
(Bai et al., 2020), and the lower rate of symptom presentation among
youth. One final contributing factor is the pandemic epicenter—Wuhan is a
megacity of 11 million residents and a major transportation hub “home to
the largest train station, biggest airport, and largest deep-water port in
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 5

central China” (Wilder-Smith et al., 2020, p. 3). Asymptomatic or mildly-

symptomatic transmission in the context of a globally-connected megacity
offered a head-start to the virus compared to any possible epicenter contain-
ment efforts.
Community transmission—that is, the spread of a virus within a certain
region as opposed to travel-related transmission—is targeted through pro-
grams of social distancing. By slowing the rate of spread within the commu-
nity, these policies help keep infection rates at a manageable level within
existing healthcare infrastructure, and allow research on treatment methods
to progress so that evidence-based treatments can be applied to individuals
who fall ill (e.g., Preiser et al., 2020).
Community transmission presents a particular challenge to higher edu-
cation institutions and campus life. Network analysis of the Cornell
campus, for instance, demonstrates how universities are
uniquely vulnerable spaces (Weeden & Cornwell, 2020): Not only does a
single student very quickly reach the entire student body—about two
degrees of separation—but nearly all students are connected through multiple
pathways such that isolation of particular nodes does not eliminate possible
indirect exposure to that area of the network. Once community transmission
begins, the closure of schools seeks to reduce the possibility that asympto-
matic students act as unidentified transmission vectors. Especially because
COVID-19 exhibits fewer severe symptoms among young people, continu-
ation of normal schooling practices introduces a great deal of uncertainty.
It is in this context of risk mitigation, social distancing, and the particular
uncertainty of transmission risk amongst the student-age population that
the securitization of face-to-face schooling must be understood.

Emergency eLearning and the securitization of face-to-face

schooling
The COVID-19 response is not the first time that emergency eLearning
programs have been considered as appropriate crisis-response measures.
A similar strategy was observed in Fall 2009, where 67% of H1N1 contin-
gency plans involved substitution of online classes for face-to-face classes
(Allen & Seaman, 2010, p. 9). The comparators for COVID-19 also
extend to other forms of natural disasters. Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in
August 2005 physically damaged 27 colleges in the Gulf region and more
in Texas, causing damage that made it impossible for on-campus courses
(Meyer & Wilson, 2011).4 What followed was a rapid-deployment of
online learning called the “Sloan Semester,” named for the sponsoring
Alfred Sloan Foundation; a consortium of 153 colleges and universities
reacted quickly to create an online course catalogue of over 1300 courses
6 M. P. MURPHY

(Lorenzo, 2008). Then—as now—there was ample justification for alterna-

tive arrangements.
Assembling a sample pool of university declarations for the purposes of
establishing regularities was the first step of in the examination of emergency
eLearning protocols. The sample was drawn from the top-25 universities in
the United States, as ranked by Times Higher Education/Wall Street
Journal (2019). Every university declared emergency eLearning policies
(100%). While these changes were most commonly announced by the univer-
sity President (72%), announcements were also made by the Chancellor (8%)
or provost/interim provost (20%). Announcements typically referenced pro-
tecting the community (84%) but also referred to managing uncertainty
(32%) and—less often—threat response (8%). All announcements took
place between March 6 and 13, with the majority (60%) happening on
March 10/11.
With the outlying case of Stanford—whose earlier response was likely
influenced by two students living in on-campus residence going into self-iso-
lation (Drell, 2020)—the announcement pattern indicates a fairly normal dis-
tribution over the week. While there was some variability in the rhetorical
framing and precise timing, the announcements all tended toward the same
result—in light of COVID-19, face-to-face schooling could not continue.
The announcements at Harvard and Yale are typical of the selection, and
given their role as example-setting universities for higher education world-
wide, it is worth to provide closer analysis. Their declarations highlight how
the enactment of emergency eLearning protocols represents a move to secur-
itize face-to-face schooling at those institutions. In the case of Harvard, Lawr-
ence Bacow (2020) begins by presenting COVID-19 as a force that could have
been expected to change lives: “Like all of you, I have been intently following
reports of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and considering the many
ways in which its future course might alter my life and the lives of those closest
to me.” This establishes the existential nature of this general threat—COVID-
19—vis-à-vis the relevant audience (the Harvard community). After noting
that “a group of extremely dedicated people has been working literally
around the clock to respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19,” he intro-
duces “major near-term changes” that are designed to “limit exposure to the
disease among members of the community.” These changes are major, and
fundamentally change the ordinary way that classes take place by invoking
extraordinary measures.
The first change that Bacow (2020) introduces is that “we will begin tran-
sitioning to virtual instruction for graduate and undergraduate classes.” While
the general threat is the impact of COVID-19 on the Harvard community
(and the world writ large), it is specifically the class experience that is taken
out of the ordinary face-to-face realm and displaced into a “secure” format
of eLearning. This presentation fits the key elements of securitization
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 7

theory as the securitizing actor has identified a threat to the community, and is
declaring the suspension of normal life, replaced swiftly with emergency con-
tingency measures. That the statement addresses a relevant audience is
clarified through Bacow’s insistence that the measures are necessary “to
protect the health of the community.” Face-to-face classes are framed by
the threat rhetoric of community transmission and the threat of COVID-
19, demanding a shift from the normal state of affairs to extraordinary
action. Bacow’s (2020) statement represents a clear securitizing move from
the outset, and the acceptance of emergency eLearning by the Harvard com-
munity suggests that the securitization was ultimately successful.
The original announcement at Yale (Salovey, 2020a) framed the issue in a
somewhat lighter tone, referencing “the challenges posed by COVID-19”
rather than Harvard’s life-altering framing of the pandemic. Peter Salovey
(2020a) similarly invokes “scientific and medical evidence” as well as
“expert advice of dedicated faculty and medical professionals” in justifying
the decision-making process leading to emergency eLearning. But four days
later, after a Yale student had received a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis,
the tone changed. In Salovey’s (2020b) subsequent statement, the rhetoric
of securitization is clearly present—and in a particular way the Schmittian
logic of the exception that Williams (2003) argues is always inherent in the
securitizing move:
I write to inform you of important decisions regarding the remainder of the
spring semester and remind you of measures we must take in the interest of
the health and safety of our community …

The increasing intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic has required that we

revisit decisions that seemed proactive when first announced just days
before. On March 10, I let you know that through at least April 5 … we
would hold classes online using Zoom, Canvas, and other digital tools. It was
my hope that we might see a return to normalcy before the end of the semester.

With regret, and in consultation with Yale’s medical and public-health experts
and other university leaders, I have concluded that an early return to the class-
room is not possible. The clearest relevant lesson we have drawn from our best-
informed, wisest sources is this: pandemics are defeated by bold measures that
blunt the curve of the rate of infection through dramatic reduction of intense
human contact.

I have therefore decided that the measures we announced on March 10—

keeping students off campus and moving teaching online—will apply
through the full spring semester …

The general threat is clearly identified—COVID-19—and the justification of

the actions to be taken—expert advice—is repeated throughout the statement.
The introductory framing here again references “measures we must take” to
defend against an existential threat against “the health and safety of our
8 M. P. MURPHY

community.” Salovey (2020b) draws attention to the extraordinary nature of

the necessary actions by stating that “pandemics are defeated by bold
measures [emphasis added],” but in the same paragraph draws the link
between a “return to the classroom” and the kind of “intense human
contact” that the community must be made secure from.
In addition to the secure-versus-ordinary interaction binary, the Schmit-
tian logic of norm and exception (2005) is reified through this passage in
two ways. First, because the resumption of face-to-face classes marks an
impossible “return to normalcy” due to worsening pandemic conditions,
Salovey (2020b) must extend the emergency—that is, the exceptional—
eLearning provisions announced earlier. Necessity demands exceptional
measures, and normalcy becomes simply impossible. But it is also important
to notice the more authoritative voice taken in the second letter—not only is
the first person “I” used thirteen times, as opposed to six in the first instance,
but the language constructs a stronger image for the office of Yale’s President.
Beyond pleasantries,5 the difference in usage of the first-person is that there is
a gravity in the presentation of emergency measures in the second statement
(“I have concluded,” “I have therefore decided”) that does not exist in the first
(“I describe actions”). Rather than presenting the emergency measures as a
messenger, the second statement also reaffirms the President’s position as a
securitizing actor.
Face-to-face schooling is constructed as a specific threat from which the
communities must be protected, and emergency eLearning is the security
measure proposed to protect the community. The securitizing moves
invoke not only the authority of public health officials who warn about the
dangers of community transmission, but also reify the right of the university
official to enact exceptional measures. The current consensus among infec-
tious disease specialists, epidemiologists, and public health officials would
seem to indicate that the decision of these universities to limit face-to-face
classes as a means of reducing close-proximity interactions is justifiable.
But the lesson of securitization theory is that the particular construction of
these classes as security threats is a social process, not a deterministic response
to objective conditions. The prevalence of references to protecting the com-
munity among declarations of emergency eLearning, and the clear mobiliz-
ation of emergency and security rhetoric in the declarations from Harvard
and Yale offer further evidence that face-to-face schooling has been securi-
tized in light of the COVID-19 crisis.
The identification of the social construction of face-to-face classes as a
security threat is important not only to understand the way that we reach
the state of emergency eLearning, but also grants insights into how a tran-
sition out from emergency eLearning might occur. The reification of the auth-
ority of the President’s office in both the Harvard and Yale examples seems to
suggest that it will be the prerogative of that office holder to lift the
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 9

suspension. Surely such an announcement will invoke rhetorical frames of

confidence, public health and safety, and assure preparedness against a poss-
ible second wave, but the authority has clearly been (rein)vested in the office
of the President. The decision to move beyond emergency eLearning will not
be announced by local public health officials or voted on by university com-
munities. Therefore, even if we accept the decision to transition to emergency
eLearning as the proper response, securitization theory teaches us that the
mechanism by which it was enacted curtails the possibility for any kind of
democratic deliberation on how we might return from emergency eLearn-
ing—much less how we might seek out an improved and more emancipatory
educational system.
While the tendency for emergency measures to be normalized has been a
conclusion of theoretical interventions in critical International Relations
scholarship (e.g., Salter, 2008b), the need for the future desecuritization of
face-to-face schooling is already empirically evident. To be precise, the nor-
malization of emergency eLearning does not refer to the decision to extend
limitations placed upon face-to-face schooling through the fall should a
second wave of COVID-19 threaten the Northern hemisphere—in which
case improving quality of online options may be a necessary step (Lederman,
2020). Rather, the normalization of emergency eLearning refers to strategies
that frame the widespread adoption of online learning under COVID-19 as
a pathway to a new normal rather than an emergency response.
In a reflection on the spread of asynchronous eLearning titled “Why
Online Education Will Attain Full Scale,” Sener (2010, pp. 9–10) highlights
natural and manmade disasters as important opportunities for the spread
of eLearning through the “Wildcard Effect,” and eLearning advocates in
search of public sector austerity and private sector profit have already
started promoting the success of emergency eLearning as justification for nor-
malization of these crisis-management protocols. When interviewed by
Chronicle of Higher Education columnist Goldie Blumenstyk (2020) about
the emergency eLearning transition, the owner of Noodle (a transition-to-
eLearning company) suggested that “these events could prompt colleges to
stop distinguishing between online and classroom programs.” With that dis-
tinction gone, the administrative choice between logistical and physical limit-
ations of face-to-face hurdles and increased tuition revenues through massive
online courses could change the equation. And it is not only higher edu-
cation’s future that universities choices are shaping.
In the province of Ontario, Canada, the recently-elected conservative gov-
ernment led by Doug Ford introduced mandatory eLearning in secondary
schools, in an effort to cut expenses in the publicly-funded education
sector. In light of recent developments, political commentators supporting
the Ford government’s austerity measures have seized on the example of
Harvard instituting emergency eLearning as justification for mandatory
10 M. P. MURPHY

eLearning at a larger scale (Lilley, 2020). With increased pressures from both
for-profit educational technology corporations and governments seeking to
implement eLearning as a means of slashing education budgets, there is a
sense of inevitability of efforts to normalize emergency eLearning. It would
be more surprising if these efforts weren’t made.

Toward a post-pandemic pedagogy

It is difficult to predict what the educational landscape will look like after
COVID-19 passes, in part because of the magnitude of the community trans-
mission threat posed by campus interactions (e.g., Weeden & Cornwell, 2020).
Indeed, discussions are ongoing at many institutions about extension of emer-
gency eLearning through Fall 2020 in order to avoid the Northern Hemi-
sphere’s possible second wave of COVID-19. But efforts to normalize
emergency eLearning measures precisely because post-pandemic pedagogy
seems unthinkable rob the education sector of the opportunity for open dis-
course on how the sector can be emancipatory for all students. The normal-
ization of emergency eLearning would mean the normalization of a form of
education that perpetuates structural inequalities of class, race, and support
(Farhadi, 2019) that schools should allow students to break free from.
Highlighting the danger of normalizing emergency eLearning is not the
same as condemning all forms of online learning. Indeed, one might argue
that there is a different type of emancipation that eLearning offers. Bracketing
the digital divide, the radical portability of eLearning may increase access to
education in rural communities. For individuals who are unable to attend a
traditional full-time face-to-face school due to personal or financial circum-
stances, the flexibility of asynchronous eLearning may provide wider access.
And even within traditional higher education institutions, hybrid or
blended forms may help improve the quality of face-to-face teaching by
moving content delivery online and focusing in-person sessions on active
learning (e.g., Bowen, 2012). Especially in the United States, optional eLearn-
ing might curb the burden of exorbitant tuition fees that makes higher edu-
cation inaccessible for many individuals.
But for any of these discussions of post-pandemic pedagogy are to proceed,
face-to-face schooling must be desecuritized. The normalization of emergency
eLearning, or justifications of widespread and mandatory eLearning protocols
on grounds of crisis response precludes the very possibility of productive
debate on the value of education. The lesson of securitization theory for emer-
gency eLearning is that this important debate simply cannot proceed in the
realm of security, and the issue of face-to-face schooling must be brought
back to a desecuritized space where discourse is possible.
At the same time as securitization theory informs our understanding of
emergency eLearning, the latter poses important challenges for the former.
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 11

First, the sharp binary in securitization theory between “normal politics” and
the discourse of “security” obscures in this case the multiple inequalities and
barriers that exist in the imperfect “normal” situation. Similar to prior cri-
tiques of desecuritization as insufficient, one must ask what inequalities and
barriers are reified when emergencies lead to nostalgia for the prior normal
condition. Second, the securitized state of affairs may preclude the enactment
of outcomes of open debate, the many commentaries on emergency eLearning
seems to suggest that minor interventions—what we might call a form of
policy tinkering—do appear to be possible within the securitized framework.
Though insufficient for emancipatory change, how does tinkering within a
securitized situation alter that suboptimal form-of-life? Perhaps the continued
response to emergency eLearning can offer future empirical material to puzzle
out these questions.

Notes
1. For the logic of the exception, see Schmitt (2005); for the definition of politics as
friend/enemy, see Schmitt (2007). However, it is important to recall that the
shared examination of exceptional politics does not mean that securitization
and emergency exceptionalism are the same phenomenon—on this point, see
Murphy (2019).
2. The name “COVID-19” officially replaced “2019-nCoV” one month earlier, on
11 February (Guarner, 2020, p. 420).
3. The case fatality rate is a moving average highly sensitive to the number of the
poor identification of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic individuals. Fauci
et al. (2020) note that because of this uncertainty “the case fatality rate may be
considerably less than 1%” (p. 1).
4. Johnson et al. (2006) share the story of Delgado Community College, where 20
of 25 buildings had significant water damage.
5. E.g., “I write this letter,” “I ask you to take care of yourselves,” and similar.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editor and reviewers of Contemporary Security Policy for
their most insightful comments shared in the process of revising the article. An
earlier version of the argument received helpful comments from Veronica Kitchen,
Heather Smith, and Tanya Irwin from the WIIS-Toronto Twitter Conference, as
well as Andrew Heffernan.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. The views and
opinions expressed in this article are the work of the author and do not necessarily
reflect an official position of the Algonquin & Lakeshore CDSB.
12 M. P. MURPHY

Funding
The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Science and Huma-
nities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributor
Michael P. A. Murphy is a SSHRC doctoral fellow in International Relations and Pol-
itical Theory at the University of Ottawa, and an associate member of the University
of Ottawa Research Unit in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He serves as an
elected school board trustee, Editorial Assistant at Security Dialogue, and member-at-
large for ISA’s Active Learning in International Affairs Section. He has published over
a dozen articles on International Relations theory, political theory, and pedagogy,
appearing in International Relations, the Journal of International Political Theory,
Critical Studies on Security, the Journal of Political Science Education, and elsewhere.
His work can be found at: http://bit.ly/37NJMkZ

ORCID
Michael P. A. Murphy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9523-4402

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