UNE Center for Global Humanities presents ‘Viral Times: Health Libertarianism in the Age of Covid’ on March 24

The term “viral times” captures both the COVID-19 pandemic we have just lived through, as well as the social media landscape, where information proliferates online and “goes viral” in ways that are detrimental to the health of the body politic. Amidst this fraught backdrop, the vulnerability of bodies and public nature of health and health care have come to possess heightened significance.

An upcoming lecture at the University of New England Center for Global Humanities will examine the political and medical trends that have resulted in “health libertarianism” — a movement that has fueled anti-mask, anti-vax, and anti-public-health sentiment during these strange times through which we’ve all muddled.      

Scholar Sara Rushing, Ph.D., will present “Viral Times: Health Libertarianism in the Age of COVID,” on Monday, March 24, at 6 p.m. at Arthur P. Girard Innovation Hall on the UNE Portland Campus for the Health Sciences.

Rushing is a professor of political science at Montana State University, specializing in political theory, including democratic theory and feminist theories of embodiment. Her recent book, “The Virtues of Vulnerability: Humility, Autonomy, and Citizen-Subjectivity,” explores how our experiences as patients within modern health care systems inform our understanding of ourselves as citizens, able (or not able) to navigate complex power/knowledge dynamics within and beyond mainstream medicine. 

In “The Virtues of Vulnerability,” Rushing focuses on giving birth, managing death and dying, and veterans with PTSD seeking care within the VA mental health complex. Her current research explores the concept of “health libertarianism,” particularly as the “medical freedom” movement has grown increasingly robust in the wake of the pandemic and its associated mask/vaccine battles.

As Rushing will explain, libertarianism is, broadly, an anti-government ideology that defines freedom as being left alone to decide for and care for oneself, or to manage one’s own affairs as one sees fit. Health libertarianism applies this ethos to our bodies and to public health. This thread of medical freedom activism is particularly robust in Rushing’s home state of Montana, where libertarianism has a strong history and deep cultural roots. 

But similar versions of libertarian ideology are increasingly widespread. What are the implications of this political and medical orientation at moments of particular public health threat? How might we think about the appropriate balance between being a skeptical, informed, and autonomous patient (and citizen), and cultivating trust in the medical establishment and respect for public health initiatives?

CGH Director Josh Pahigian, M.F.A., noted, “Professor Rushing will take up this topic against the backdrop of a measles outbreak in West Texas, increasing concern over a new strain of bird flu, and the ascension of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary. Her talk couldn’t be more timely.” 

This will be the fourth of six events this spring semester at the Center for Global Humanities, where lectures are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. 

For more information about the event, visit the Center for Global Humanities website.