The resort to virtual conferences due to COVID-19 

  

   Since the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis broke out, the World Health Organization declared that it was a global pandemic on the 11th of March, 2020. Shortly afterward, many countries realized the growing danger of this fatal virus, as the mortality rate was still and still skyrocketing; hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. On the other hand, the economic sector has deteriorated due to the lockdown that many governments reluctantly went on. Correspondingly, the international aviation movement was disabled, and many destinations were completely shut down, leaving no chance to fly over. The number of victims is approaching 1 million worldwide, and millions of infected are struggling to survive. Some of those enormously infected people succumb to death daily as their immune systems cannot resist anymore. 

Sadly, although many aspects worldwide are exerting strenuous efforts, either private pharmaceutical corporations or medical labs, to manufacture a reliable vaccine, nothing has been scientifically proven thus far. Therefore, what I have been observing in many affected countries indicates that certain aspects that claim to have invented vaccines are camouflage or kind of anesthetic injections to keep the grumpy masses quiet until further notice. Russia, for instance, has recently declared that some of its scientists had discovered an effective treatment in the labs, which was announced by President Putin, claiming that the vaccine will be available in the international market soon. Also, President Trump has shown up on several occasions claiming that U.S. scientists found the vaccine, but they need more time to verify its results and other aspects that have claimed the same. It was an arena where companies compete over a particular product to register a patent. Still, people can trust no fundamental patent to eliminate the coronavirus.

Media coverage of the dramatic developments of the virus put people under uncertainty. These narratives became interwoven, so people ended up being confused and even not believing in the novels of those officials who, from time to time, showed up announcing a new radical solution for the COVID-19 crisis. 

There is still an unreliable source to consider whether this virus will vanish soon or not, especially nowadays, as there are rumors about the second wave of coronavirus on the way. 

This pandemic has changed all walks of life, especially the economic wheel; billions of dollars have been lost. We can see many people got their businesses shut down and then went bankrupt; millions of people lost their jobs. In this battle, the academic field was not peaceful; it was also significantly affected. The campuses were shut down, and classes, lectures, and seminars became virtual domains. Online courses are the easiest way to communicate and keep the educational process running. It is an affordable method for many people; however, it turned out to be challenging for underprivileged people who need more financial capacity to buy internet bundles all the time. Indeed, recent reports proved that virtual or distance education, even though it has been a helpful sanctuary that students had to resort to, widened the gap between the privileged and underprivileged students. The latter only have the opportunity to catch up with the educational process if they have internet access at their homes.

Furthermore, I learned about some underprivileged students who used to come to the campus to attend the lectures and take advantage of the university's free Eduroam internet service. In Cape Town and Bangkok, I went through that to do my second and third semesters consecutively to fulfill the Global Studies Program (GSP) requirements, an international exchange masters program provided by Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg in Germany. Therefore, it is imaginable how challenging the situation has been during the current crisis.

Virtual education included conferences; many institutions and universities turned to holding online conferences to avoid the infection, resulting in the lockdown that restricted people's movements. Participants can not travel to different countries to participate in such events anymore. This transformation plays a crucial role in saving up the expenses that could be spent on organizing international conferences, even though it might be boring because participants prefer actual attendance to discuss topics face-to-face. 

I have attended many online conferences since I was in Bangkok this year. I recently attended three international conferences organized by the Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies (JCRS) at Friedrich-Schiller University, where I interned. The first round took place on August 9- 10, when a new association called the International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS) was established. The next round came to continue the presentations done by participants from many countries around the globe, professors, thinkers, and socio-political actors in their communities within the field of reconciliation. Most importantly, this association brought scholars from the global north and south to develop this academic field, which I found inspiring as it touches on globalizing thoughts as our program GSP aims to. 

The second conference was on establishing the Academic Alliance for Reconciliation in the Middle East and North Africa (AARMENA), which took place on Aug 11-14th and has almost the same plan of developing reconciliation studies in cooperation with universities in the Arab World. I had the honor to attend the panel discussion at both conferences with the academic staff of JCRS and develop the new website of this center, which was done jointly with my supervisor. 

On the whole, virtual education and related tools like conferences cannot be considered obstructive tools in the educational process. Still, in contrast, it has been conducive to fulfilling the goals of this process, although at some points it has widened the gap between students or learners from different social classes. I could assert that virtual education is better than nothing to fend off the implications of COVID-19.