5 minute speech on covid 19 for students

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2 Minute Speech on Covid-19 (CoronaVirus) for Students

The year, 2019, saw the discovery of a previously unknown coronavirus illness, Covid-19 . The Coronavirus has affected the way we go about our everyday lives. This pandemic has devastated millions of people, either unwell or passed away due to the sickness. The most common symptoms of this viral illness include a high temperature, a cough, bone pain, and difficulties with the respiratory system. In addition to these symptoms, patients infected with the coronavirus may also feel weariness, a sore throat, muscular discomfort, and a loss of taste or smell.

10 Lines Speech on Covid-19 for Students

The Coronavirus is a member of a family of viruses that may infect their hosts exceptionally quickly.

Humans created the Coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in China, where it first appeared.

The first confirmed case of the Coronavirus was found in India in January in the year 2020.

Protecting ourselves against the coronavirus is essential by covering our mouths and noses when we cough or sneeze to prevent the infection from spreading.

We must constantly wash our hands with antibacterial soap and face masks to protect ourselves.

To ensure our safety, the government has ordered the whole nation's closure to halt the virus's spread.

The Coronavirus forced all our classes to be taken online, as schools and institutions were shut down.

Due to the coronavirus, everyone was instructed to stay indoors throughout the lockdown.

During this period, I spent a lot of time playing games with family members.

Even though the cases of COVID-19 are a lot less now, we should still take precautions.

Short 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

The coronavirus, also known as Covid - 19 , causes a severe illness. Those who are exposed to it become sick in their lungs. A brand-new virus is having a devastating effect throughout the globe. It's being passed from person to person via social interaction.

The first instance of Covid - 19 was discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, China . The World Health Organization proclaimed the covid - 19 pandemic in March 2020. It has now reached every country in the globe. Droplets produced by an infected person's cough or sneeze might infect those nearby.

The severity of Covid-19 symptoms varies widely. Symptoms aren't always present. The typical symptoms are high temperatures, a dry cough, and difficulty breathing. Covid - 19 individuals also exhibit other symptoms such as weakness, a sore throat, muscular soreness, and a diminished sense of smell and taste.

Vaccination has been produced by many countries but the effectiveness of them is different for every individual. The only treatment then is to avoid contracting in the first place. We can accomplish that by following these protocols—

Put on a mask to hide your face. Use soap and hand sanitiser often to keep germs at bay.

Keep a distance of 5 to 6 feet at all times.

Never put your fingers in your mouth or nose.

Long 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

As students, it's important for us to understand the gravity of the situation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has on our communities and the world at large. In this speech, I will discuss the real-world examples of the effects of the pandemic and its impact on various aspects of our lives.

Impact on Economy | The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the global economy. We have seen how businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to widespread job loss and economic hardship. Many individuals and families have been struggling to make ends meet, and this has led to a rise in poverty and inequality.

Impact on Healthcare Systems | The pandemic has also put a strain on healthcare systems around the world. Hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients, and healthcare workers have been stretched to their limits. This has highlighted the importance of investing in healthcare systems and ensuring that they are prepared for future crises.

Impact on Education | The pandemic has also affected the education system, with schools and universities being closed around the world. This has led to a shift towards online learning and the use of technology to continue education remotely. However, it has also highlighted the digital divide, with many students from low-income backgrounds facing difficulties in accessing online learning.

Impact on Mental Health | The pandemic has not only affected our physical health but also our mental health. We have seen how the isolation and uncertainty caused by the pandemic have led to an increase in stress, anxiety, and depression. It's important that we take care of our mental health and support each other during this difficult time.

Real-life Story of a Student

John is a high school student who was determined to succeed despite the struggles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

John's school closed down in the early days of the pandemic, and he quickly found himself struggling to adjust to online learning. Without the structure and support of in-person classes, John found it difficult to stay focused and motivated. He also faced challenges at home, as his parents were both essential workers and were often not available to help him with his schoolwork.

Despite these struggles, John refused to let the pandemic defeat him. He made a schedule for himself, to stay on top of his assignments and set goals for himself. He also reached out to his teachers for additional support, and they were more than happy to help.

John also found ways to stay connected with his classmates and friends, even though they were physically apart. They formed a study group and would meet regularly over Zoom to discuss their assignments and provide each other with support.

Thanks to his hard work and determination, John was able to maintain good grades and even improved in some subjects. He graduated high school on time, and was even accepted into his first-choice college.

John's story is a testament to the resilience and determination of students everywhere. Despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic, he was able to succeed and achieve his goals. He shows us that with hard work, determination, and support, we can overcome even the toughest of obstacles.

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How to talk to your friends and classmates about covid-19 and school reopening, here are some tips for students to have conversations with their friends and classmates.

Actively listen

Offer support, be kind and respectful, educate your friends about facts and avoid the spread of misinformation, encourage them to follow the protective measures.

If you notice that your friends are struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic and school reopening:

• Show genuine interest and ask them, “Do you want to talk about your feelings and concerns?” or “How are you feeling about going back to school? ”
• Listen attentively like turning your body to face your friend and waiting until they have finished speaking before you respond. Reflect on what your friend says by summarizing or restating it back to them in your own words and asking if you have understood well. Be careful not to give advice. Do not tell your friend what to do.
• Validate their feelings: Tell your friend, “I can understand why you feel this way” or “It must be hard for you.”
• Try to understand their point of view by putting yourself in their shoes and seeing things from their perspective. Think about how your friend feels rather than how you would feel.
• Respond with respect by thanking your friend for sharing their feelings with you. That means they trust you. Do not laugh at them, make fun of them or talk about what they shared with peers unless they want you to

Sometimes, your friends may share information that indicates they might need help or more attention from an adult, such as that they are depressed or that they wish to harm themselves or someone else. It is important not to talk about your friends behind their backs, but talking to an adult if your friend needs help (even if they ask you not to) is sometimes necessary.

If you feel comfortable, you may also share a personal story of how you are feeling and overcoming the concerns and challenges. However, make sure not to shift the focus of the conversation, keeping your friend as the central part of it. If they aren’t ready to talk, don’t push them. You can tell them, “You don’t need to share your feelings with me if you don’t want to, but I am still happy to spend time with you and keep you company.” You can just sit beside them and reassure them that you will be there when they are ready to talk. It will make them feel that they aren’t alone and they will slowly begin to open up. 

Going back to school can be as exciting as it is worrying for some of your friends and classmates. They might feel less motivated to do activities they used to enjoy at school. It could be because of various factors. They may have lost someone they love or they may be overwhelmed with a huge amount of information including on social media, TV or other channels. Though it is important to stay up-to-date , over-consumption of information, especially those that have an impact on the way we feel, can take a toll on emotional and mental health well-being. You/they might have been exposed to rumours and false information that would have heightened their fears.

You can help them to strike a balance to keep themselves informed by looking for information using reliable sources such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as local health authorities in your country. You can share some of your own positive experiences on how to navigate the situation – maybe ‘doing a physical activity', ‘learning a new skill’ or ‘spend more time with the family'. You can invite them to do some fun activities together while maintaining a safe distance from each other. Instead of talking about who got sick and how to focus on who got well and recovered. Talk about how things are getting better with the introduction of the vaccines. Ask them to follow all preventive measures to stay safe from COVID-19. Encourage them and remind yourself to disconnect sometimes too. Your mind, just like your body needs time to rest to stay well.

Watching your friend experience the physical and emotional pain of bullying or cyberbullying can be heart-breaking. If your friend or their family member have been diagnosed with COVID-19, there is a possibility of your friend being bullied by other people. Sometimes, people who belong to a particular community are the victims of bullying, because of misinformation as some people look for someone to blame for the impact of COVID-19 in their lives. But bullying is harmful and will leave your friend feeling devalued, rejected and excluded.

COVID-19 can affect anyone at anytime, if proper preventive measures aren’t followed. If your friend is a victim of bullying, be kind and offer support. If your friend or classmate is bullying others – online or at school, be a positive role model, speak up when others are mistreated and question bullying behaviours. Remind them that comments made online still hurt people in the real world. You can prevent bullying by being inclusive, respectful and kind to your peers. You/your friend/your classmate does not have to face bullying alone. Educate yourself about schooling policies relating to in-person as well as cyberbullying.

Reporting bullying to your school is important. If you are uncomfortable reporting to  school officials, tell a trusted adult – parents, teachers or counsellors. Talk to your school teacher and explain how you/your friend feels about it. If you are reporting cyberbullying, keep a record of the date and time of the calls, e-mails or texts and don’t delete any messages you receive.

Knowing the facts will protect not only you but also your friends and classmates. Be aware of the fake information about COVID-19 circulating on social media that is feeding fear. Some of your friends might be returning to school after hearing false information about COVID-19. If they tend to share inaccurate or false information, don’t criticize them publicly. Talk to them in private and explain the consequences of misinformation. You can ask them about their source. If it is an unreliable source, encourage them to find information about COVID-19 from reliable sources such as UNICEF and WHO, and health authorities in your country. Explain to them that misinformation spreads panic and may result in additional stress and anxiety for people. By staying informed about the situation and following public safety and health measures, you can protect yourself as well as your friends and classmates.

Encourage your friends to stick to the rules of COVID-19 at school as well as outside. Help them understand that following safety and protective measures will help them and their loved ones stay safe and prevent the spread of COVID-19.

• When engaging in school activities such as playing together or walking in the hallways, encourage them to maintain a safe distance. You can stretch your arms to have an idea of what a safe distance is.
• Talk about hand hygiene, which includes washing your hands for a minimum of 40 seconds with water and soap or using an alcohol-based hand rub for at least 20 seconds.
• If your friends find it uncomfortable to wear a mask, show them how to wear the mask correctly - covering the mouth, nose, and chin. Explain that masks act as a barrier to prevent respiratory droplets – when a person with COVID-19 coughs, speaks or sneezes – from reaching us.
• If a vaccine is available to your friends, encourage them to get vaccinated. You can emphasize that vaccines go through rigorous processes to ensure they are safe and effective.
• Be a role model of positive behaviours and encourage them to follow your school and community's safety and health guidelines.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Students Deserve a Voice in Our Pandemic Response. Here’s How to Give It to Them

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As the country began to shut down because of COVID-19 this spring, our staff at Mikva Challenge, which seeks to close the civic-opportunity gap for students from underresourced schools and communities, knew that this was the moment to expand, not retract, our work. Young people were abruptly facing a sudden and drastic reduction in their social connections and crucial services, including school meals, school-based mental-health counseling, after-school jobs, and an important safety net for identifying child abuse.

With that in mind, Mikva Challenge formed its first-ever National Youth Response Movement to elevate and promote youth voices and solutions during this national crisis. This group of 22 high school students from 15 cities across the country met twice a week with dedicated adult facilitators from early April to August. In doing so, they are learning leadership skills—specifically, civic-leadership skills—to organize themselves and their peers to respond to COVID-19 with youth-focused policy suggestions.

Related Video

Youth advocate Cristina Perez of Mikva Challenge and a student-activist talk about the significance of student leadership during a crisis.

To help build students’ sense of civic power and agency, we have found it’s important to follow a few guideposts. Here is what other educators should consider when doing this kind of work, especially right now:

About This Project

With the rise of the pandemic this spring and the national fight for racial justice, many young people are displaying inner reserve, resiliency, self-regulation, leadership, service, and citizenship in ways that no one could have anticipated.

In this special Opinion project, educators and students explore how young people are carving their own paths.

Read the full package.

Build community and relationships to ensure students can grow, participate, and engage.

This is a cornerstone of our work, both in and outside the classroom. An interactive, youth-led, project-based education in democracy—also known as “action civics"—can only be successful when adult facilitators invest significant time in community building and storytelling to make young people feel safe enough to lead, engage with each other, and be vulnerable. To reach students in online learning spaces, those adult facilitators must be dynamic, outgoing, and persistent.

We learned that students need ample time to express their thoughts, either in the group setting or in smaller breakout discussions—both of which must be virtual now. But here’s the difficult part: Beyond the logistics of scheduling students across three time zones in the midst of the pandemic, NYRM adult facilitators needed to take into account the issues students were managing while they sheltered at home, including their mental health. Twice-weekly meetings gave students a much-needed outlet and a connection with their peers. But those who struggle with mental-health challenges had more difficulty re-engaging during their hard times, instead withdrawing from the virtual setting. We found that consistent contact with all participants beyond Zoom calls, including through supportive emails and texts, kept them engaged in the project.

Provide your students with the opportunity to exercise and mature leadership skills they may not even realize they possess."

Provide the space and opportunities for students to lead the way—and then step aside.

With students already receiving more than eight hours a day of virtual instruction in school, we knew that the NYRM virtual workshops needed to distinguish themselves. Mikva facilitators guided the process, but the students decided the focus and the projects. Students steered discussions, did the research, and made the calls on policy recommendations. Following the brutal killing of George Floyd, students went from addressing their peers’ social-emotional needs related to the pandemic to a more holistic vision focused on racially just and equitable schools. They wrote a series of policy recommendations for school and district leaders to dismantle the cradle-to-prison pipeline, build inclusive curriculum, and provide mental-health support in schools.

Invite students to “do” democracy, not just learn about it.

The pandemic has underscored the necessity for students to be in leadership rather than just learn about leadership skills. The pandemic gave students a purpose and a cause for their work. And it created an opportunity to reach lawmakers, researchers, and activists who were also working remotely.

Students recorded persuasive “soapbox” speeches on their phones about the impact of COVID-19 and then called on their peers to do the same. NYRM student leaders developed five policy recommendations for districts to create equitable schools by centering students’ voices, experiences, and needs. And last month, they shared these policy recommendations with members of Congress and education policy and philanthropic leaders during a National Youth Policy & Elections Roundtable.

What does all of this mean for schools?

Provide your students with the opportunity to exercise and mature leadership skills they may not even realize they possess. They have important ideas to share for how we can adapt and respond to this moment.

Coverage of character education and development is supported in part by a grant from The Kern Family Foundation, at www.kffdn.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the September 09, 2020 edition of Education Week as Empowering Youth Voice

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How to Talk to Students about COVID-19

Misty hance.

• March 27, 2020

Schools across the nation are taking extra measures in response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) to keep students and staff safe. While these steps are certainly necessary, it can be unsettling for students who may not know exactly what is happening but see the changes taking place. Administrators and teachers can do a lot to reduce the fear and inform students with facts on a developmental level appropriate for each child.

Provide Accurate Information in a Calm and Reassuring Manner

Adults hear a lot of information, and some can be misleading and a lot can be overwhelming. It is human nature to then share the message and discuss the concerns. However, this type of “water-cooler” banter must not take place in the presence of students, especially those who may not be able to fully separate the fact from opinion. When talking about COVID-19 in the presence of students, it is important to provide accurate information, in a way that is understandable to them. It is also important to present yourself in a calm and reassuring manner, even if you personally have questions or concerns on the subject. Students of any age feed off of their teacher’s energy. If a teacher appears stressed and anxious, then students will often react in the same way. However, if the teacher appears to be rational and peaceful, then students will be more relaxed as well.

It is okay to let high school students know that this is a new strand of a virus that has been around for nearly 60 years. Older students will be able to grasp how new strands may develop and it takes time to build immunity, find cures, and create vaccines. A good history lesson that might lessen their fears would be to share how we have overcome previous medical concerns such as polio and discovered medicines such as penicillin through similar trials in our past.

Avoid Using Language that Blames Others or Leads to Stigma

No matter the age of the students, this is not the time to be sharing political views or placing blame on those believed by some to be responsible for this pandemic. Keeping a positive message for students is best, such as reminding students that there are scientists all over the world currently working on vaccines and medications to help.

Create an Open Dialogue

Allow students time to ask questions, share concerns, and relay things they have heard in order to help validate their feelings and lessen their fears. This is a time to be honest but limited in information. Be prepared to answer questions with facts, and make sure to keep answers on an age-appropriate level. When students are sharing things they have heard, it is important to correct misinformation in a reassuring way. Be careful not to spread panic. To get the most up-to-date information, teachers and students can visit the Center for Disease Control website .

Likewise, if students know of someone who has contracted the virus, it is best to be reassuring that medical staff can provide support and quarantining can help stop the spread of the virus. Do not go into details about mortality rates at this time. If students ask about the possibility of death, place emphasis on chances of recovery and allow parents to dive deeper into that conversation as they choose.

It might be added that it is best to keep these discussions brief, as children, like adults, can become consumed by the “what-ifs” and inundated with constant talk of COVID-19. Teachers can address questions as they arise or set aside a few minutes to address questions and concerns. Keep the main focus of the day the intentional lesson of the class.

Show Students Everyday Actions to Reduce Spread

Emotions are high for everyone, especially when a sneeze or cough is heard across the classroom. Remind students to cough or sneeze in the way your school or district has determined most appropriate. Some ways include coughing or sneezing into a tissue or into the bend of the elbow; but this can still spread some droplets, so have sanitizer nearby. Handwashing is another very important activity to encourage frequently. While hand-sanitizer may be adequate, students should be allowed time to wash with soap and water that is warm several times throughout the day.

This is a great time to teach about health and communicable diseases and how they spread, again at an age-appropriate level. Let students take part in experiments demonstrating how germs are spread from person to person by using flour or baby powder and watching how it spreads across the room as someone touches varies items. For those who are ready to understand, have conversations about the need for social distancing and how this is effective in flattening the curve so that our medical facilities can care for all the patients in need.

It is also a good time to talk about other healthy habits such as eating a balanced diet and getting exercise and appropriate amounts of rest required to restore the body. Share with students that these are important ways to help your body prepare for an illness so that it can recover more quickly and be less affected by any type of illness. Use this time to focus on what is truly important, like good hygiene and preventive measures.

Messages for Students as Schools Close

More schools are beginning to close in an effort to provide safer alternatives to gathering in classrooms. This is the time to assure students that things will be different for a little while, but they will get back to normal. Provide fun, engaging activities they can do at home to stay busy and be creative. Encourage students to take advantage of free educational sites that help them sharpen their skills while they are home. Remember the teacher is there to educate and provide facts. Keep in touch through online sites used by the school, and continue to share positive, calm messages to reassure students in this unusual time.

• #Coronavirus , #COVID19 , #SocialDistancing

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope With COVID-19

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO estimates that 91.3% of the world’s students were learning remotely, with 194 governments ordering country-wide closures of their schools and more than 1.3 billion students learning in online classrooms.

Now that the building blocks of remote education have been put into place and classroom learning is underway, more and more teachers are turning their attention to the mental health of their students. Youth anxiety about the coronavirus is rising , and our young people are feeling isolated, disconnected, and confused. While social-emotional education has typically taken place in the bricks and mortar of schools, we must now adapt these curriculums for an online setting.

I have created six well-being activities for teachers to deliver online using the research-based SEARCH framework , which stands for Strengths, Emotional management, Attention and awareness, Relationships, Coping, and Habits and goals. Research suggests that students who cultivate these skills have stronger coping capacity , are more adaptable and receptive to change , and are more satisfied with their lives .

The virtual activities can be used for specific well-being lessons or advisory classes , or can be woven into other curricula you are teaching, such as English, Art, Humanities, and Physical Education. You might consider using the activities in three ways:

• Positive primer: to energize your students at the start of class to kickstart learning, prompt them to think about their well-being in that moment, get them socially connected online, and get their brain focused for learning.
• Positive pause: to re-energize students at a time when you see class dynamics shifting, energy levels dropping, or students being distracted away from the screen.
• Positive post-script: to reward students and finish off the class in a positive way before they log off.

Rather than viewing these activities as another thing you have to fit in, use them as a learning tool that helps your students stay focused, connected, and energized.

1. Strengths

Activity: Staying Strong During COVID-19 Learning goal: To help students learn about their own strengths Time: 50 minutes Age: 10+

Prior to the lesson, have students complete the VIA strengths questionnaire to identify their strengths.

Step 1: In the virtual class, explain the VIA strengths framework to students. The VIA framework is a research-based model that outlines 24 universal character strengths (such as kindness, courage, humor, love of learning, and perseverance) that are reflected in a student’s pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can learn more about the framework and find a description of each character strength from the VIA Institute on Character .

Step 2: Place students in groups of four into chat rooms on your online learning platform and ask them to discuss these reflection questions:

• What are your top five strengths?
• How can you use your strengths to stay engaged during remote learning?
• How can you use your strengths during home lockdown or family quarantine?
• How do you use your strengths to help your friends during COVID-19?

Step 3: As a whole class, discuss the range of different strengths that can be used to help during COVID times.

Research shows that using a strength-based approach at school can improve student engagement and grades , as well as create more positive social dynamics among students. Strengths also help people to overcome adversity .

2. Emotional management

Activity: Managing Emotions During the Coronavirus Pandemic Learning goal: To normalize negative emotions and to generate ways to promote more positive emotions Time: 50 minutes Age: 8+

Step 1: Show students an “emotion wheel” and lead a discussion with them about the emotions they might be feeling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. You can use this wheel for elementary school and this wheel for high school.

Step 2: Create an anonymous online poll (with a service like SurveyMonkey ) listing the following 10 emotions: stressed, curious, frustrated, happy, angry, playful, sad, calm, helpless, hopeful.

Step 3: In the survey, ask students to enter the five emotions they are feeling most frequently.

Step 4: Tally the results and show them on your screen for each of the 10 emotions. Discuss the survey results. What emotions are students most often feeling? Talk about the range of emotions experienced. For example, some people will feel sad when others might feel curious; students can feel frustrated but hopeful at the same time.

Step 5: Select the top two positive emotions and the top two negative emotions from the survey. Put students into groups of four in virtual breakout rooms to brainstorm three things they can do to cope with their negative emotions, and three action steps they can take to have more positive emotions.

Supporting Learning and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Crisis

Activities, articles, videos, and other resources to address student and adult anxiety and cultivate connection

Research shows that emotional management activities help to boost self-esteem and reduce distress in students. Additionally, students with higher emotional intelligence also have higher academic performance .

3. Attention and awareness

Activity: Finding Calm During Coronavirus Times Learning goal: To use a mindful breathing practice to calm our heart and clear our mind Time: 10 minutes Age: All

Step 1: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very calm and 10 being highly stressed. 

Step 2: Do three minutes of square breathing, which goes like this:

• Image a square in front of you at chest height.
• Point your index finger away from you and use it to trace the four sides of the imaginary square.
• As you trace the first side of the square, breathe in for four seconds.
• As you trace the next side of the square, breathe out for four seconds.
• Continue this process to complete the next two sides of the square.
• Repeat the drawing of the square four times.

Step 3: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very calm and 10 being highly stressed. Discuss if this short breathing activity made a difference to their stress.

Step 4: Debrief on how sometimes we can’t control the big events in life, but we can use small strategies like square breathing to calm us down.

Students who have learned mindfulness skills at school report that it helps to reduce their stress and anxiety .

4. Relationships

Activity: Color conversations Purpose: To get to know each other; to deepen class relationships during remote learning Time: 20 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Randomly assign students to one of the following four colors: red, orange, yellow, and purple.

Step 2: Put students into a chat room based on their color group and provide the following instructions to each group:

• Red group: Share a happy memory.
• Orange group: Share something new that you have learned recently.
• Yellow group: Share something unique about you.
• Purple group: Share what your favorite food is and why.

Step 3: Come back to the main screen and ask three students to share something new they learned about a fellow student as a result of this fun activity.

Three Good Things for Students

Help students tune in to the positive events in their lives

This is an exercise you can use repeatedly, as long as you ensure that students get mixed up into different groups each time. You can also create new prompts to go with the colors (for example, dream holiday destination, favorite ice cream flavor, best compliment you ever received).

By building up student connections, you are supporting their well-being, as research suggests that a student’s sense of belonging impacts both their grades and their self-esteem .

Activity: Real-Time Resilience During Coronavirus Times Learning goal: To identify opportunities for resilience and promote positive action Time: 30 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Have students brainstorm a list of all the changes that have occurred as a result of the coronavirus. As the students are brainstorming, type up their list of responses on your screen.

Step 2: Go through each thing that has changed, and have the students decide if it is something that is within their control (like their study habits at home) or something they cannot control (like not attending school on campus).

Step 3: Choose two things that the students have identified as within their control, and ask students to brainstorm a list of ways to cope with those changes.

You can repeat this exercise multiple times to go through the other points on the list that are within the students’ control.

Developing coping skills during childhood and adolescence has been show to boost students’ hope and stress management skills —both of which are needed at this time.

6. Habits and goals

Activity: Hope Hearts for the Coronavirus Pandemic Learning goal: To help students see the role that hope plays in setting goals during hard times Time: 50 minutes Age: 10+

Step 1: Find a heart image for students to use (with a program like Canva ).

Step 2: Set up an online whiteboard to post the hearts on (with a program like Miro ).

Step 3: Ask students to reflect on what hope means to them.

Step 4: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for the world during coronavirus times, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss common themes with the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can take to create hope for others during this distressing time.

Step 5: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for themselves, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss common themes with the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can take to work toward the goal they’re hoping for.

Helping students to set goals and have hope at this time can support their well-being. Research suggests that goals help to combat student boredom and anxiety , while having hope builds self-worth and life satisfaction .

The six activities above have been designed to help you stay connected with your students during this time of uncertainty—connected beyond the academic content that you are teaching. The intense change we are all facing has triggered heightened levels of stress and anxiety for students and teachers alike. Weaving well-being into online classrooms gives us the opportunity to provide a place of calm and show students they can use adversity to build up their emotional toolkit. In this way, you are giving them a skill set that has the potential to endure beyond the pandemic and lessons that may stay with them for many years to come.

About the Author

Lea Waters , A.M., Ph.D. , is an academic researcher, psychologist, author, and speaker who specializes in positive education, parenting, and organizations. Professor Waters is the author of the Visible Wellbeing elearning program that is being used by schools across the globe to foster social and emotional elearning. Professor Waters is the founding director and inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Psychology , University of Melbourne, where she has held an academic position for 24 years. Her acclaimed book The Strength Switch: How The New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish was listed as a top read by the Greater Good Science Center in 2017.

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Writing Prompts, Lesson Plans, Graphs and Films: 150 Resources for Teaching About the Coronavirus Pandemic

This cross-curricular resource collection, including math, history, science and music, helps students process, deepen and challenge their understanding of the pandemic and its effects on our society.

By The Learning Network

Since January, The Learning Network has published over 150 resources to help students process, deepen and challenge their understanding of the pandemic and its far-reaching effects on our society.

Via our daily writing prompts, we’ve asked students to share their experiences: finding joy in the face of isolation, staying fit, and managing social distancing and online schooling. Through our daily lesson plans, we’ve encouraged students to explore topics like the science of the virus, the history of global pandemics and the effects of social class.

Our graphs have encouraged students to analyze how interventions can slow the spread of the coronavirus, and our short films have helped students consider how the crisis has contributed to growing racism and inequality — and a need for ice cream. We also have a quiz to help educate students on the basics.

While our regular daily and weekly features are on hiatus during the summer, we’ll be back in September with many more resources for the new school year. Let us know what else we might add to this collection as the world continues to battle the virus by making a comment or emailing us at [email protected].

Teaching Resource Collections

A good place to start exploring the Learning Network’s materials on the coronavirus pandemic is our three in-depth resource collections below. Each includes student-centered activities and projects as well as a wealth of links to New York Times coverage.

Coronavirus Resources: Teaching, Learning and Thinking Critically

12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

7 Ways to Explore the Math of the Coronavirus Using The New York Times

Student Opinion

Every day of the school year, we publish a fresh Student Opinion question that invites students to read a Times article and respond with their own ideas. Some of our questions ask students to make an argument, while others invite personal writing. Teachers tell us that these daily opinion questions are a good opportunity to practice writing for an authentic audience.

Here are over 40 coronavirus-related Student Opinion writing prompts that cover an array of topics, like family life, dealing with anxiety, life without sports, voting during a time of social distancing and missing your prom.

How Will We Remember the Coronavirus Pandemic?

What Have You Learned About Yourself During This Lockdown?

Where Should We Draw the Line Between Community Health and Safety and Individual Liberty and Privacy?

Do You Prefer to Dwell in the Past, Live in the Present or Dream of the Future?

How Has Social Distancing Changed Dating for Teenagers?

How Is Your Family Dividing Responsibilities During the Quarantine?

Should Students Be Monitored When Taking Online Tests?

Do You Enjoy Going On a Walk — Especially Now?

What’s the First Thing You Plan to Do After Quarantine?

What Makes a Great Leader?

When the Pandemic Ends, Will School Change Forever?

What Do the Objects in Your Home Say About You?

Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?

Is It OK to Laugh During Dark Times?

What Are Your Hopes for Summer 2020? What Are Your Worries?

What Do You Miss Most About Your Life Before the Pandemic?

What Are Your Favorite Games?

How Do You Greet Your Friends and Family?

How Can You Tell a Story About Your Life Right Now Through a Few Simple Numbers?

How Are You Feeling About Missing Prom?

Is Your Family Experiencing Greater Conflict During a Time of Self-Quarantine?

What Weaknesses and Strengths About Our World Are Being Exposed by This Pandemic?

Should We All Be Able to Vote by Mail?

What Acts of Kindness Have You Heard About or Participated In During Coronavirus?

How Are You Getting Your Sports-Watching Fix?

How Has the Coronavirus Changed How You Use the Internet?

Holidays and Birthdays Are Moments to Come Together. How Are You Adapting During the Pandemic?

Should Schools Change How They Grade Students During the Pandemic?

What Are Some Ways to ‘Travel’ Without Traveling During the Pandemic?

Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Bringing Your Extended Family Closer Together?

What Role Should Celebrities Have During the Coronavirus Crisis?

How Do Animals Provide Comfort in Your Life?

Has Your School Switched to Remote Learning? How Is It Going So Far?

What Questions Do You Have About the Coronavirus?

How Do You Think the Primaries and 2020 Presidential Election Should Proceed?

How Are You Staying Healthy and Fit?

What Are You Reading, Watching, Listening To, Playing and Cooking? A Place for Recommendations

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

What Songs Matter to You Now?

How Can We Help One Another During the Coronavirus Outbreak?

Is It Immoral to Increase the Price of Goods During a Crisis?

What Is Your Reaction to the Latest News About the Coronavirus Outbreak?

Stress, Worry and Anxiety Are All Different. How Do You Cope With Each?

How Concerned Are You About the Coronavirus Outbreak?

Lesson of the Day

Every school day we offer a fresh “ Lesson of the Day ” based on the most interesting, important and student-friendly news that The New York Times has published that week — on topics like sports, music, politics and world issues. Each lesson includes an engaging warm-up activity, questions for students to discuss or write about, and activities that allow them to apply what they’ve learned in creative and challenging ways.

Below are over 30 Lessons of the Day that explore subjects and stories as varied as wild animals venturing into public spaces while humans shelter in place, why e-sports are providing a space for community and fun during the pandemic, and how the disease is disproportionately infecting and killing African-Americans.

‘ Lionhearted’ Girl Bikes Dad Across India, Inspiring a Nation

Athing Mu Might Be America’s Fastest Teenager. How Much Faster Will She Be in 2021?

What We Know About Your Chances of Catching the Virus Outdoors

How Pandemics End

A 92-Year-Old Piano Teacher Won’t Let Students Miss Bach in the Pandemic

A Heartbreak for Children: When the County Fair Is Canceled

Here’s What the First Night of the Subway Shutdown Looked Like

Gaps in Amazon’s Response as Virus Spreads to More Than 50 Warehouses

Irish Return an Old Favor, Helping Native Americans Battling the Virus

No More Jenga, No More ‘Amen’ as Cities Learn to Live With Coronavirus

Their Met Gala, Their Way. You’re Invited.

Now Virtual and in Video, Museum Websites Shake Off the Dust

Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States

Reopening Has Begun. No One Is Sure What Happens Next.

Imagine Online School in a Language You Don’t Understand

The Heartbreaking Last Texts of a Hospital Worker on the Front Lines

The Next Year (or Two) of the Pandemic

Competitive Marble Racing Finds Fans in a World Missing Sports

Lessons in Constructive Solitude From Thoreau

Five Takeaways on What Trump Knew as the Virus Spread

College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are.

When Humans Are Sheltered in Place, Wild Animals Will Play

D.I.Y. Coronavirus Solutions Are Gaining Steam

Learning About Coronavirus and the Class Divide

Online, Virtual Games Escape the New Reality

Olympians Have Another Year to Prepare for Tokyo. It’s a Blessing and a Curse.

The Digital Divide: Researching the Challenges of Online Learning for Many Students

5 Key Things in the $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package

Welcome to the Virosphere

Photos From a Century of Epidemics

Food, a Basic Pleasure, Is Suddenly Fraught

We Live in Zoom Now

Coronavirus Cost to Businesses and Workers: ‘It Has All Gone to Hell’

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‘ When Can We Go to School?’ Nearly 300 Million Children Are Missing Class

To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China

What Is the Coronavirus? Symptoms, Treatment and Risks

What’s Going On in This Graph?

Each week in “ What’s Going On in This Graph? ” we spotlight an engaging graph previously published elsewhere in The Times and pair it with a simple set of questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? What do you think is going on in this graph?

On Wednesdays, teachers from the American Statistical Association provide live facilitation in our comment section to respond to students as they post analyses and consider what story the graph is telling. Then, at the end of the week, we add a “reveal” that shares the original article containing the graph, highlights from the moderation, related statistical concepts and helpful vocabulary.

This year, graphs included high school sports injuries and the changing size and calories of fast-food menu items over the past 30 years. Here are seven “What’s Going On in This Graph?” posts addressing the coronavirus pandemic:

Easing Lockdowns

Estimated Time for Covid-19 Vaccine

Pandemic Consumer Spending

Pandemic Intervention Models

Coronavirus Protective Measures

Flatten the Curve

Coronavirus Outbreak

Each week in Film Club we feature a short documentary film from The Times — most are under 10 minutes — and ask students to think about themes like race and gender identity, technology and society, civil rights, criminal justice, ethics, and artistic and scientific exploration.

To encourage thoughtful and honest dialogue, we pose open-ended questions: What moments in this film stood out for you? Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew? What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? What questions do you still have?

Film Club entries explored how the pandemic is exposing education’s digital divide; how it is bringing out fears, stereotypes, xenophobia and racism; and life lessons for navigating our difficult times from an astronaut.

Are Ice Cream Trucks Essential? In These N.Y.C. Neighborhoods, They Are

Concert for One: I.C.U. Doctor Brings Classical Music to Coronavirus Patients

What My Spacewalk Taught Me About Isolation

‘It’s a Pretty Big Bummer’: Olympic Dreams on Hold

She’s an Honors Student. And Homeless. Will the Virtual Classroom Reach Her?

Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School

Fear, Humor, Defiance: How the World Is Reacting to Coronavirus

Picture Prompt

We publish a Picture Prompt — a short, accessible, image-driven post that uses a photograph or illustration from The Times to inspire student writing — on our site Tuesdays through Fridays. These writing prompts invite students to create short stories and poems; share experiences from their lives; tell us what they think an image is saying; weigh in on hot-button issues; and discover, question and explain scientific phenomena.

Teachers tell us they use these prompts in all kinds of ways. Some use them to encourage students to develop a daily writing habit . Others use the prompts as an exercise to practice inferences, spark discussion or support reading .

We published more than 30 Picture Prompts during the pandemic that included images of an empty movie theater, protesters demanding the reopening of America, and strangers helping one another from falling into an abyss.

Restaurant Food

Crystal Ball

The Front Page

Strange Times, Strange Dreams

Songs of Hope

Open and Shut

Teenage Drivers

Magical Chores

Graduation in a Pandemic

Ramadan in Isolation

Across Divides

Instagram Challenges

Carrying the Weight

Funny Flicks

Endless Conversation

Pandemic Projects

Home Cooking

Looking Back

Your Learning Space

Flickering Sign

Empty Spaces

Trapped Inside

Social Distancing

Helping Hands

Working From Home

Current Events Conversation

Each Thursday during the school year we showcase our favorite student comments to our writing prompts as part of our Current Events Conversation . The weekly series provides a great snapshot of what teenagers are thinking about, and teachers tell us that students get excited to see their names and writing celebrated in The New York Times.

The coronavirus dominated our Current Events Conversations from this spring as students weighed in on issues like the challenges of remote learning and whether it’s OK to joke during dark times:

What Students Are Saying About Quarantine Dating, Ghosts and Songs of Hope

What Students Are Saying About Online Test Proctoring, Favorite Books and Driving Tests

What Students Are Saying About Post-Quarantine Plans, Leadership and Masks

What Students Are Saying About Humor in Tough Times, Expectations for Summer 2020 and Apologies

What Students Are Saying About ‘Life by the Numbers,’ Accents and Pandemic Protests

What Students Are Saying About Family Conflict in Quarantine, Starting Over and Health Care Heroics

What Students Are Saying About Acts of Kindness, Internet Habits and Where They’d Like to Be Stranded

What Students Are Saying About Remote Learning

What Students Are Saying About Public Preschool, Staying Healthy and Being Trapped Inside

What Students Are Saying About Living Through a Pandemic

What Students Are Saying About the Coronavirus

Additional Resources

We also published other pandemic-related resources that don’t neatly fit into the categories above, such as our special coronavirus-related news quiz and winning entries from our Student Editorial Contest.

Weekly News Quiz for Students: Special Coronavirus Edition

Dangerous Numbers? Teaching About Data and Statistics Using the Coronavirus Outbreak

What’s Going On in This Picture? | May 18, 2020

Not American Yet

The Class of 2021 Could Change College Admissions Forever

This Land Was Made for You and Me

How Animal Crossing Will Save Gen Z

Harnessing Boredom in the Age of Coronavirus

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Free Speech on Campus: COVID-19 and Beyond

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​February 11 & February 25, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Free speech is central to democracies and part of the lifeblood of college and university communities. Knight Foundation research shows that student attitudes about and experiences of free speech were changing even before the disruptions of COVID-19, the racial justice movement, and the 2020 presidential election. These two webinars explore how these changes are shaping free speech on campus and how leaders should respond in relationship to efforts to increase inclusion and the growing role of communications technologies.​

February 11, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Amid political turmoil, hyperpolarization, and social distancing, supporting students’ free speech rights while also cultivating an inclusive campus culture is more difficult than ever. In a survey from Knight Foundation and Gallup, 81 percent of students say they want to be exposed to all kinds of speech on campus, but 69 percent also believe inclusion is essential. Women and minority students have far less faith that the First Amendment protects them, even as they embrace their free speech rights to lead a new generation of civil right activism.

In this webinar, leaders promoting and supporting free speech and civic engagement on campuses will discuss how to make sense of these tensions to embrace both free speech and inclusion in the present environment.

​​​View the webinar recording below. 

February 25, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Already a central channel for speech within campus communities, social media and other forms of digital communications have become the primary means through which students and faculty seek information, debate issues, and organize for action during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students, particularly those who are BIPOC or LGBTQ, are increasingly the target of online bullying and misinformation campaigns. But these same students are embracing technology to advance social justice on an unprecedented scale. This webinar will explore how colleges and universities can safeguard students’ free speech in digital forums while also combatting deception and extreme polarization, encouraging inclusion and democratic deliberation.

View the webinar recording below. 

​This event is generously sponsored by the Knight Foundation .

View the Recordings

Free speech and inclusion in higher education, campus free speech and technology, ​learn more.

Prepare for the events by reading these documents.

The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students’ Views of Free Expression

To the Point: Campus Inclusion and Freedom of Expression: Managing Social Media (PDF) 

Inclusion and Free Speech: Strategic for Managing Tensions

Inclusion and Free Speech: The Right to be Heard

Free Speech in the US and on College Campuses Today

Conversations: Free Speech and Expression

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• Research & Learn

Table of Contents

Covid on campus: the pandemic’s impact on student and faculty speech rights.

Introduction

It’s difficult to find any aspect of our lives that has not been impacted by COVID‑19. Travel, holidays, business, entertainment, and much more look completely different today than they did a year ago. As K–12 and college students, faculty, teachers, and administrators know all too well, education has been deeply changed — perhaps permanently — by travel restrictions, school closures, and the switch to online education.But COVID‑19’s consequences for education have not been limited to location, access, or, in the University of California, Berkeley’s case, temporary bans on outdoor exercise. On campuses across the country, speech and due process rights have been challenged, too, as administrators struggle to respond to the pandemic. At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we have been paying careful attention to how these trends have impacted vital student and faculty rights in higher education.

In an August 2020 incident that drew national attention, North Paulding High School in Georgia suspended two students for tweeting photos of their school hallways crowded with students, many without masks. Administrators at the school reportedly warned via the public address system that students publicly criticizing the school’s COVID‑19 response would be punished.

FIRE wrote at the time, “While last week’s situation occurred at a high school, it bears an important lesson about campus censorship in a time of crisis, equally applicable to colleges and universities.” Unfortunately, over the past year, FIRE has needed to remind universities time and again that, despite the challenges and difficulties of COVID‑19, their obligations to the First Amendment cannot simply be cast aside.

In a September 2020 statement, FIRE addressed the various measures and restrictions undertaken in response to the spread of COVID‑19 and offered three principles to guide universities during the pandemic:

• Viewpoint discrimination and compelled speech are prohibited;
• Public health practices may be mandated, but must be clear, published, and consistently enforced; and
• Medical necessity must guide enforcement decisions, and cannot supersede procedural protections.

FIRE also offered this reminder: “Institutional COVID restrictions must be temporary and tied only to the threat to public health. Restrictions or disciplinary actions substantially unrelated to protecting public health should be rejected and reconsidered.”

With vaccine distribution now underway, the worst of COVID‑19 will hopefully be behind us soon. But going forward, it’s vital that we understand how campuses have handled the challenges surrounding the pandemic and student and faculty rights, so that we can better plan for similar challenges in the future while fulfilling moral and legal obligations to student and faculty rights. In this report, COVID on Campus: The Pandemic’s Impact on Student and Faculty Speech Rights , FIRE gives readers a clearer picture of what institutions have done wrong, how they can do better, and the broader challenges to education posed by the past year. If your rights have been violated, please contact FIRE.

Challenges to Student and Faculty Rights 

Over the past year, FIRE has received more requests for help than ever before — and a significant part of the jump was due to universities’ handling of the pandemic. In some cases, university violations of student rights were exacerbated because of COVID‑19. At Haskell Indian Nations University, for example, a student was kicked out of his campus housing and forced to sleep in his car — during a pandemic and under a statewide stay-at-home order — after administrators suspended him without a hearing for telling a campus facilities employee he was on “some kind of power trip” and “being an asshole.”Three predominant themes emerged from the cases FIRE took on since the spread of the pandemic: (1) censorship of speech related to academic institutions, (2) censorship of speech related to COVID‑19, and (3) troubling measures applied to campus communities during COVID‑19. Below is a collection of cases highlighting these themes and their effects on student and faculty rights across the country.

Censorship of Speech Related to Academic Institutions

In general, it’s not uncommon for universities and their administrations to react poorly to criticism. This trend did not disappear during COVID‑19. At some universities, campus community members, especially resident assistants, were warned against speaking publicly or critically about their universities’ handling of the pandemic.

As the following cases show, universities cracking down on critics are wrong in at least two ways. First, it’s immoral and, in some cases, unconstitutional to censor speech simply because it portrays institutions in a poor light, especially when the subject matter relates to public health. And second, it’s ineffective. Attempted censorship often does nothing more than bring more attention to the speech in question, a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect .

University of California, Santa Barbara : It didn’t take long after COVID‑19 shutdowns began for a campus censorship threat to emerge. At UCSB, though, it wasn’t administrators who threatened faculty for speaking out — it was online testing service ProctorU. On March 13, the UCSB Faculty Association Board expressed “serious concern” about the use of ProctorU, alleging that the service’s privacy policy “potentially implicates the university into becoming a surveillance tool.” Less than a week later, ProctorU’s attorney responded with a blustering letter making a number of claims, including defamation, copyright, and trademark, against the Faculty Association for its criticism — and this letter was sent to state and federal prosecutors, too.

Wayne State University Law School : FIRE wrote to Wayne State University Law School in July over concerns about retaliation against students pressing for bar exam accommodations during COVID‑19. Earlier that month, a law school administrator emailed the graduating class in response to students advocating for the option of a “diploma privilege,” which would allow qualifying graduates to pursue admission to the State Bar of Michigan without sitting for the Michigan Bar exam. The email warned , “[W]hile you have every right to criticize the bar exam, the Board of Law Examiners, or the State Bar of Michigan online, it may not be a smart strategy for passing Character & Fitness with ease.”

As FIRE’s letter explained, the email was troubling on two fronts: First, administrative warnings like this chill student speech about how institutions handle the pandemic, an unacceptable result. Second, the warning raises questions about the state of law students’ First Amendment rights in Michigan. Fortunately, Dean Richard Bierschbach responded to FIRE to assert that the law school “ardently supports and will actively defend our students’ First Amendment expressive rights.”

University of Missouri : As students at some campuses began to return to in-person studies and dorms last summer, student employees hoped to sound the alarm about their safety concerns. But at the University of Missouri, they were stymied by administrative warnings or policies limiting their ability to speak out. Speaking to the Columbia Missourian , residential assistants anonymously accused university practices of “needlessly put[ting] them and others at risk” amidst the pandemic. According to the Missourian , the RAs required anonymity because they were not “authorized” to speak about the issue to the media, and a “strict media policy for Residential Life employees” had been “laid out” to them in a meeting.

On August 14, FIRE wrote to the university for clarification on student employees’ ability to speak to the media, including the student press. Shortly thereafter, Mizzou replied to FIRE to convey that the university does not impose a “blanket prohibition against speaking to the media” and promised to inform staff of this information. As FIRE explained , Mizzou’s commitments go a long way to clear up confusion about student employees’ speech rights, a concern that could be fully ameliorated by revisions to Mizzou’s “ Residential Life media protocol .”

Louisiana State University : On the same day FIRE wrote to Mizzou about restrictions on student employee speech, FIRE sent a letter to Louisiana State University over similar concerns. On August 11, The Advocate reported that three LSU RAs quit “largely because . . . officials couldn’t answer real-world questions about its extensive pandemic housing plan” and that “RAs are specifically forbidden from speaking to the media, including the on-campus newspaper, The Reveille.” FIRE’s letter called on LSU to rescind any blanket prohibitions on student employees’ speech. LSU didn’t bother to acknowledge FIRE’s concerns, but responded — because, by law, it had to — to a public records request seeking the university’s Residential Life Media Policy . Unsurprisingly, the policy is troubling. It warns RAs who intend to speak to the media: “Even though you may be discussing your own experiences, you will be identified as an LSU staff member, so you are representing the university. This is not an appropriate time to air your disagreements with Residential Life.”

Juniata College : It’s not just students who feared repercussions for speaking critically of their colleges’ handling of COVID‑19. At Juniata College, a professor felt similar pressure . In August, tenured professor Douglas A. Stiffler posted a Facebook comment regarding a National Public Radio segment about campuses and COVID‑19. Stiffler wrote , “As the result of Juniata’s decision to hold classes in person, it is quite possible that people who come on to Juniata’s campus will die, as will people in town. That is what is at stake.” According to The Chronicle of Higher Education , “Stiffler had largely forgotten about the comment when his chair called him about it a few days later. Someone had complained about it, she told him, and he might want to be more careful about his posts in the future.” Stiffler believed that would be the end of the discussion. It wasn’t.

Provost Lauren Bowen contacted Stiffler and told him in a meeting that the college would be placing a letter of reprimand in his file. In the letter, Bowen wrote: “[W]hen you state publically [sic] that Juniata’s decision could cause people who come to campus to die, you have gone beyond offering feedback on policy and are not exercising the restraint and respect expected of faculty.” While institutions can encourage civil discourse, “restraint” and “respect” are too subjective to enforce — and the subjects of criticism are often likely to perceive their critics as uncivil. That naturally means that administrators empowered to enforce civility norms will be inclined to use them against their critics.

University of Virginia : Living up to its “green light” rating for speech-protective policies , the University of Virginia committed to reworking its resident advisor agreement to ensure that its RAs would be free to speak with reporters. On September 11, FIRE asked UVA to address its limits on student employee speech after student paper The Cavalier Daily reported on a policy that “restricts resident staffers from speaking to the press,” which inspired RAs to anonymously voice their concerns about their safety issues for residence hall workers. In response to FIRE’s request, UVA committed to revising its RA agreement to clarify, “Individual Resident Staff members may speak to the media or public in their individual capacities, making clear they are not speaking on behalf of or for the program.”

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : In October, concerns about student employee speech that had been raised at Mizzou, UVA, and LSU reemerged at UNC Chapel Hill after an investigation from The Daily Tar Heel . The student newspaper’s article asserted that, due to a media relations policy, “[a]s the public raised questions for months about Carolina Housing’s operations in the face of COVID‑19, student staff had been hesitant to answer them to the media — many citing their fear of getting fired or losing their chance to be rehired.” FIRE wrote to the university asking that, in keeping with its status as a “green light” university, UNC Chapel Hill review student concerns about the media relations policy and acknowledge students’ speech rights. In response, UNC Chapel Hill confirmed to FIRE that it “takes seriously” its speech commitments and had updated its media relations policy in light of its First Amendment obligations.

Frostburg State University : As at other schools, FSU student journalists were vital in shining a light on restrictions on student employees’ speech about COVID‑19 safety. In November, student paper The Bottom Line reported that multiple RAs alleged that “the Office of Residence Life would now require Hall Directors to indicate ‘attitude’ issues on employment evaluations if RAs spoke to media outlets about the university’s handling of the virus.” The paper sought more information and filed public records requests for administrators’ emails. It found that, though it was never sent, the university’s housing director wrote a draft statement in response to The Bottom Line ’s questions about RAs. That draft read: “In the real world, if you bad mouth your employer you could lose your job. With the Resident Assistants, who are employed by Frostburg State University, speaking out against their employer may be noted in their evaluation forms and used as a teaching tool.”

FIRE wrote to FSU to ask the university to commit to not punishing RAs for speaking out about pandemic-related fears. The university responded on November 20, promising that “FSU has no policy restricting the free speech of its resident assistants.” But that wasn’t the end of the story. On November 23, administrators summoned student journalist Cassie Conklin to discuss her alleged harassment of a faculty member a month prior. The university claimed it had video evidence of Conklin’s harassment. In reality, the video was evidence of her innocence and showed her simply sticking a note back on the faculty member’s door after it had fallen. Curiously, though, Conklin’s meeting occurred the next business day after her reporting about a student’s COVID experience caught wider media attention . FSU’s administration not only warned Conklin that it was investigating her for harassment but also demanded The Bottom Line do the same and investigate her too. After a press release and letter from FIRE and the Student Press Law Center, FSU backed down on its investigation, but the state of freedom of the press at Frostburg State remains chilly.

Collin College : On top of dealing with the COVID‑19 pandemic, Collin College has its own censorship epidemic. Since October, FIRE has battled Collin College over its mistreatment of professor Lora Burnett, who caught attention for her tweets critical of Vice President Mike Pence during a 2020 vice presidential debate, and its stonewalling of public records requests about Burnett.

In February 2021, Collin’s administration escalated its reputation for rights violations when it directed that two professors, Audra Heaslip and Suzanne Jones, be dismissed when their contracts expire — against recommendations from Collin faculty and staff. The basis for the nonrenewal? The professors’ criticism of the college’s handling of COVID‑19. In response, FIRE wrote another letter to Collin’s administration stating — yet again — that the First Amendment protects the rights of faculty members at public institutions to speak as private citizens about matters of public concern.

Censorship of Speech Related to COVID‑19

While the challenges posed by COVID‑19 require innovative and, in some cases, unprecedented solutions, censorship shouldn’t be one of them. FIRE was compelled to remind a number of universities of that fact over the past year in response to efforts to crack down on speech, from the clinical to the controversial, related to COVID‑19.

University at Albany : “Corona virus isn’t gonna stop anyone from partying.” Well, that would soon prove to be untrue, but it was nevertheless the caption added to a @BarstoolAlbany Instagram video about a “coronavirus”-themed party held at University at Albany in mid-February last year. The video, which was shortly taken down, reportedly showed “a bucket filled with ice and bottled Corona beer and a student wearing a surgical mask over his face” as well as a white sheet with a biohazard symbol and “two faces,” one with an X over each eye and the other a “frown, with what looks like straight lines for eyes.” In response to the event, student organization Asian American Alliance shared a message on Instagram calling on SUNY Albany to “investigate this illegal student group” and “requir[e] them to delete this video and to apologize on their Instagram homepage.”

In a statement , SUNY Albany announced that it was “aware of a coronavirus-themed party that was recently held off-campus and not sanctioned by the University at Albany,” and that the “theme of this party was distasteful and hurtful and is not representative” of the campus. The statement went on to assert that “any allegations of conduct violations will be investigated and addressed through the University’s disciplinary process.” In response, FIRE reminded SUNY Albany of its First Amendment obligations as a public university. While the party’s theme may have been deeply offensive to other members of the campus community, that has no bearing on the expression’s protection under the First Amendment.

New York University Grossman School of Medicine : On March 31, FIRE wrote a letter to NYU after learning that the Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health prohibited faculty from speaking with the media about COVID‑19 without prior approval from the Office of Communications and Marketing. FIRE’s letter explained that while NYU is not bound by the First Amendment as a private university, its muzzle on faculty doctors’ speech should be considered unacceptable at any institution that seeks to uphold the values of a free society. The restrictions at NYU mirrored a broader push to silence medical workers during a fraught period in hospitals.

FIRE’s letter concluded: “Let your faculty and the press talk to each other. The public they both serve will benefit.” The following months would confirm time and again how right this message was, and how vital it is for the public to have access to current medical information during a health crisis.

University of California System : In late March, the University of California System published a “guidance document” for “campus decision makers, faculty, administrators, students and staff” titled “Equity and Inclusion during COVID‑19.” The document contained a series of statements, but two specifically caught public attention: 1) “Do not use terms such as ‘Chinese Virus’ or other terms which cast either intentional or unintentional projections of hatred toward Asian communities, and do not allow the use of these terms by others. Refer to the virus as either ‘COVID‑19’ or ‘coronavirus’ in both oral and written communications”; and 2) “Do not resort or revert to unkind discussions about people, individuals or groups who may not be in your immediate social circle.” As FIRE explained at the time, while the document is framed as “guidance,” its use of language like “Do not . . . ” suggests these provisions are mandatory. And as a public university system bound by the First Amendment, UC may not prohibit protected speech. Directives like these may encourage students and faculty to self-censor, even if the guidance is intended to be only aspirational. FIRE encouraged the UC System to revise this guidance to ensure that it is intended as a “more speech” solution, rather than unclear “guidance.”

Columbia University : As we all know, conversations on social media can quickly turn hot-tempered. That is even more true when the discussion turns to topics like politics and the pandemic. In April, Columbia professor Jeffrey Lax argued on Facebook with Gabriel Montalvo, a student at a different university, about then-President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Montalvo commented about what he called the “constant bash” of Trump and, after a back and forth, Lax eventually wrote, “[W]hy don’t you just drop dead, you neo-nazi murderer-lover.” Although Montalvo was a student at the City University of New York, not Columbia, he filed a “ formal complaint ” with the university the following month. In May, FIRE warned Columbia against punishing Lax, writing: “Lax’s testy Facebook back-and-forth fails to run afoul of any Columbia policy. In fact, First Amendment-style speech protections — like those Columbia has enshrined as essential to its campus — are actually at their apex in cases such as this, where the speech is political in nature and centers on a matter of great public concern. A discussion about a sitting president’s management of a global pandemic certainly fits the bill, even if that exchange is intemperate.”

Troubling Measures Applied to Campus Communities During COVID‑19

Questions about student and faculty rights on campus amidst the pandemic are not just cabined to specific faculty members or student newspapers facing threats for speaking about COVID‑19 or their institutions’ handling of it. In some cases, universities’ campus-wide measures, and their application of those measures, presented threats to individual rights as well.

Whitman College : When students left their campuses for spring break last March, it was the last time many of them would be on campus for the academic year. This was true for students at Whitman College, who quickly found themselves under a policy of prior review for student listservs after a campus controversy. In early April, Instagram campus confession account @WhitmanConfessional2 posted a submission that stated: “Petition to change the name of Coronavirus to Kung Flu.” The post spurred debates among students and complaints to administrators and the Whitman student listserv, where the @WhitmanConfessional2 account manager argued with other students about his moderation decisions. The next day, Whitman’s administration notified students that the college had “taken the necessary steps” to report the confession account to Instagram. Administrators also announced that they would begin practicing prior review of messages sent on the student listserv. FIRE wrote to Whitman on May 1 to explain why the college’s heavy-handed treatment of the student listserv could limit important student discussion — especially during a pandemic when student discussion has to take place on the internet.

The Ohio State University : In advance of the 2020–21 academic year, The Ohio State University was requiring all members of the OSU community to sign the “Together As Buckeyes Pledge” as a condition of their return to campus in August. The pledge included statements about public health but also asked signatories to confirm their agreement with this message: “I believe in excellence in all that we do and that it is important to embrace diversity in people and ideas; foster the inclusion of all Buckeyes; allow for access and affordability of an Ohio State education; subscribe to innovation around keeping the Buckeye community safe; and rely on collaboration and multidisciplinary endeavors to guide best practices. Last, I believe in the importance of transparency, integrity and trust.” As FIRE explained in a letter to OSU, this section of the statement amounted to compelled speech because it purported to commit the speaker to holding a particular view, a result unacceptable at a public university bound by the First Amendment. Fortunately, OSU understood FIRE’s concerns and promised to revise the pledge “to clarify that while the pledge states that Ohio State’s values are fundamental guiding principles of the institution, there is no requirement for individual affirmation of those values in the pledge.”

Montana State University : In an effort to enforce contract tracing, a Montana State University administrator informed student organization leaders on July 29 that all student clubs and organizations would be “required to track attendance at events, including closed meetings” in accordance with MSU’s COVID‑19 protocol. The mandatory attendance record would be taken via two apps maintained by the university. MSU had not explained the limits on which administrators had access to the attendee lists or the length of time lists would be stored. In an August 26 letter , FIRE explained to MSU that the policy posed a threat to students’ right to speak anonymously and that the university must seek the least restrictive methods to achieve its public health goals. After all, such a policy could inhibit students interested in privately attending groups focused on mental health, faith, sexuality, or other sensitive issues. In response, MSU quickly confirmed to FIRE that the Office of Student Engagement would be “crafting and disseminating new language regarding attendance guidelines to make it clear there is no requirement that student clubs record attendance and then provide those records to the university.”

Northeastern University : A student’s Instagram survey from August asked incoming Northeastern freshmen, “WHOS PLANNING ON GOING TO/HAVING PARTIES,” adding that the poll was “anonymous ofc,” and offered “HELL YEAH” AND “NAH” as answer options. Northeastern officials reached out to the pollster, who gave the university the names of students who had responded “HELL YEAH,” and the university then went on to contact the students, 115 in total, and their parents. In a letter , Northeastern threatened to rescind the students’ admissions and demanded they immediately provide a written affirmation that they will not violate the student conduct code or other COVID-related rules upon entering campus. The letter also required students to “demonstrate appropriate model behavior by actively participating in our Protect the Pack campaign.” However, the letter did not make clear what “active” participation in its campaign would look like. In response, FIRE asked Northeastern to clarify that students would not be forced to engage in compelled speech to maintain their acceptance status and make clear that students accused of violating school regulations will be afforded due process during disciplinary proceedings.

Muscatine Community College : A months-long battle over a theater production at MCC offers a striking example of how campus public health measures can be used as a pretext to silence controversial expression. Theater director and MCC faculty member Alyssa Oltmanns chose “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead,” a modern take on the Peanuts comic strip characters that includes themes of drug use, sexuality, LGBT+ issues, and suicide, for the college’s fall 2020 play. After raising concerns about the content of the play, the college canceled it, citing the pandemic as a reason for the decision — even though the play was set to take place virtually.

On September 25, FIRE wrote to MCC, explaining that “[w]hile the college may take reasonable steps to prevent the spread of disease on campus in light of the COVID‑19 pandemic, citing public health in cancelling a virtual theatre production after the dean of instruction raised concerns about the script’s content is naked pretext to censorship.” Finally, after receiving two letters from FIRE, MCC agreed to offer students free tickets to the show, which a broader community coalition stepped in to co-sponsor, and MCC said it would allow Oltmanns to select the script for a play this spring.

Broader Challenges to Online Education

While the rights of individual students and professors have been challenged by COVID-related restrictions and censorship, broader questions about the role of online education have also emerged over the past year. Online education offers plenty of benefits and opens up access to students and faculty who may have barriers for attending in-person classes. But when education can only take place online, students and faculty may encounter challenges to free expression to which they may be unaccustomed during more typical years.

For Zoom the Bell Tolls

As readers can likely confirm, Zoom has been central to continuing communication between friends, families, and colleagues during the pandemic. The same is true at many universities, which have relied on Zoom to ensure classes and academic events can go on from home. But its utilization has not come without setbacks, as targets of Zoombombing — where users intentionally “bomb” meetings with graphic and disruptive content — can attest. And Zoom’s widespread use comes with questions about how safe, transparent, and speech-protective the platform is in academia.

In June, FIRE joined the National Coalition Against Censorship and PEN America in writing to Zoom to ask the company to explain how its compliance with China’s censorship demands would impact academic institutions using Zoom. The civil liberties coalition was prompted to write to Zoom after reports surfaced accusing the company of closing accounts located outside of China after they hosted events commemorating victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

On June 11, Zoom issued a statement addressing its removal of the accounts and confirmed that going forward it would not remove accounts outside China based on demands from the Chinese government. But, as our letter explained , too many questions still remained about the platform and free expression. For example, will Zoom provide detailed reports of why users are removed from meetings so that educators can know what would disrupt student access to class? And will Zoom actively monitor events that seemingly have the potential to violate local censorship laws?

Zoom did not respond to these questions. And in December, a complaint unsealed by federal prosecutors shed more light on the company’s deeply troubling dealings with China. Prosecutors accused China-based Zoom executive Xinjiang Jin of working at the direction of Chinese officials to shut down the accounts of at least four users outside China responsible for Tiananmen-related activism. Jin also “worked with others to create fake email accounts to falsify evidence that meeting participants were supporting terrorism and distributing child pornography.”

Although Zoom confirmed that it was fully cooperating with the investigation, the incident reaffirmed the concerns that academics and advocates have expressed about the potential danger of using Zoom or similar services to hold sensitive online discussions.

Alongside fears about Zoom users’ security, another pressing question emerged: What happens if Zoom decides it doesn’t want to host some viewpoints?

The concern became a reality in September, when Zoom refused to allow two San Francisco State University faculty members to host a discussion with Leila Khaled on its service after the event faced demands for cancellation. Leila Khaled was the first woman to hijack an airplane and did so in support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group deemed a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State.

For her part, SFSU president Lynn Mahoney rightly refused demands to cancel the event, instead writing : “[T]he university will not enforce silence — even when speech is abhorrent. What sets a university apart from primary or secondary education is that the views of our faculty are not prescribed, curtailed or made to conform to content standards.”

Zoom’s cancellation of Khaled at SFSU would not be its last. The following month, Zoom also reportedly canceled events planned in response to the SFSU discussion at New York University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, citing anti-terrorism laws. But, as FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh explained in September, the claims that hosting an online discussion with Khaled is material support of terrorism, unlawful under federal law, are suspect at best.

Ultimately, the controversy over Khaled should encourage academic communities to ask broader questions about their use of Zoom and similar tools, especially when communities can only congregate virtually. Some faculty bodies, like Georgetown University’s Main Campus Executive Faculty, are already investigating the issue.

To be clear, Zoom is not bound by the First Amendment and is free to decide which content it will not host. But Zoom markets itself to universities as an online educational tool, and many universities use it now and may continue to do so after in-person classes become more frequent. Having offered itself as a facilitator of academic functions, Zoom should be expected to be a steadfast partner in defending academic freedom — and academic institutions should insist that it do so. If it continues to falter, administrators, students, and faculty should be careful to understand when, how, and why Zoom may shut down discussions, whether they feature Leila Khaled or Chinese dissidents.

Censorship Across Borders

In the United States, students and faculty enjoy the speech protections provided by the First Amendment. But those protections can only go so far when students at American universities are taking online classes from outside of the U.S. and are subject to internet and speech restrictions. This issue became even more apparent last summer after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in July that international students would be required to leave the country if their classes were held entirely online in the fall.

On July 13, FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuit brought by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE over the policy’s implementation. As FIRE’s brief explained, that policy would force students to return to countries that drastically suppress speech, potentially making class participation difficult or impossible:

Some 1.1 million international students attend American universities and colleges. Of these, approximately 502,470 students originate from—and will presumably return to—repressive states where the government blocks or filters online communication, forces the removal of certain online content, or punishes online expression by banning “fake news,” blasphemy, or insults to state institutions or officials. The lion’s share of these students—some 370,000—hail from the People’s Republic of China, the nation rated by Freedom House as “the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom” for four consecutive years. An additional 6,917 students originate from—and would presumably attend virtual classes from—Hong Kong, where expressive rights are rapidly deteriorating as the Chinese Communist Party imposes the “Great Firewall” to suppress its critics. ICE’s policy requires those students to study under the watchful eye of the Chinese government’s sophisticated regime of internet censorship and surveillance. This system denies internet users access to material required for basic academic discussions. Students studying remotely from China will, for example, be barred from discussing historical accounts of the Tiananmen Square massacre or China’s current use of concentration camps. While China represents the most dramatic threat—in both size and sophistication—to students’ expressive rights, it is not the only such actor. Some 10,000 students could return to Turkey, where political speech, including criticism of President Erdogan, can lead to prison, and where universities have been purged of dissenting academics. Others—like nearly 8,000 students from Pakistan—may return to states where “blasphemous” speech may be met with state-sanctioned or extrajudicial death. FIRE went on to explain that faculty could be affected too, and might reasonably avoid controversial discussions to ensure students are kept in class and out of legal trouble, a result that would impact students in the U.S., as well.

In a welcome reversal, ICE announced one day later that it would not enforce this policy. But the change to ICE’s policy did not eliminate concerns about repercussions for students’ online class contributions.

In late June, China foisted the National Security Law upon Hong Kong, dealing a massive blow to its vibrant protest movement. The law threatens severe penalties for violations of its vague bans on separatism and subversion and has since been systematically applied to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists. While the legislation is troubling enough for its effect on Hong Kong, its impact has gone far beyond its borders — by design. The legislation applies “even to those who are not residents of Hong Kong, with Article 38 suggesting that foreigners who support independence for Hong Kong or call for imposing sanctions on the Chinese government could be prosecuted upon entering Hong Kong or mainland China.”

The global nature of the National Security Law is evident in classrooms around the world. Late last summer, faculty at universities in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries began to adjust their teaching methods to respond to the threats from the new law and other censorship challenges posed by China. Professors feared that, between the National Security Law and widespread internet surveillance, students could be implicated in expression that could land them in legal peril, especially if they are residents studying online in China during COVID‑19 campus shutdowns.

Since August, faculty at a number of institutions including Yale University , Harvard University , and Amherst College have decided to offer anonymity in class discussions and include syllabi warnings that class material may be illegal in some countries. Just last month, Princeton University Professor of Politics Rory Truex announced to students in his Chinese politics course that he would “recommend that students who are currently residing in China should not take the course this year.”

FIRE is tracking these accommodations to study how faculty can protect students’ safety and their own academic freedom rights, and to spread awareness that repression overseas can find its way to American campuses.

Colleges and universities are far from the only institutions facing questions about individual rights and public health measures. In courts across the country, First Amendment challenges to COVID‑19-related measures have taken center stage since restrictions first took effect in March.FIRE legal fellow and assistant professor of law at Belmont University David L. Hudson, Jr. tackled this issue in an essay late last year, “COVID‑19 Emergency Measures and the First Amendment.” Hudson notes that in recent months, federal district courts have been split on whether to take a pro-government approach or an individual rights approach in determining if limitations on gatherings unconstitutionally impede religious practices and freedom of assembly. Even the Supreme Court of the United States has reached different conclusions in different cases concerning this issue. In his essay, Hudson discusses the factors that influenced these varying outcomes and warns that even when facing a pandemic, it is essential to preserve First Amendment rights.

“COVID‑19 Emergency Measures and the First Amendment” can be found in FIRE’s First Amendment Library , which also includes a timeline chronicling FIRE’s coverage of campus censorship related to medical and scientific fields.

If you’re spending a lot more time online lately, you might as well use it to better understand your rights and how to protect them. To learn more about the history, impact, and meaning of free speech in the United States and on college campuses, check out FIRE’s First Amendment Library and our resources for students and faculty.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Remarks by President   Biden on Fighting the COVID- ⁠ 19   Pandemic

4:31 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon.  I’d like to make an important announcement today in our work to get every American vaccinated and protected from the Delta virus — the Delta variant of COVID-19.

I just got a lengthy briefing from my COVID team, and here’s the lattest [sic] — the latest data that confirms we’re still in a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

While we’re starting to see initial signs that cases may be declining in a few places, cases are still rising, especially among the unvaccinated.  There are still 85 million Americans who are eligible to get vaccinated who remain unvaccinated and at real risk.

Across the country, virtually all of the COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths continue to be among the unvaccinated.  In Alabama, more than 90 percent of the current hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated.  In Texas, 95 percent of those in hospitals are unvaccinated.  Right now, it’s worse in states where overall vaccination rates are low. 

But let me be clear: Even in states where the vaccination rate is high, the unvaccinated in those states are also at risk and — and we’re seeing cases rise as a result. 

Quite frankly, it’s a tragedy.  There are people who are dying and who will die who didn’t have to. 

So, please, if you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it now.  Do it now.  It could save your life, and it could save the lives of those you love.

You know, and the good news is that more people are getting vaccinated.  Overall, weekly new vaccinations are up more than 80 percent from where they were a month ago.

While it can take up to six weeks to get fully protected after your first shot, this increased level of vaccination is going to provide results in the weeks ahead.

Just remember, we have two key — and two key ways of protecting ourselves against COVID-19.  One: safe, free, and effective vaccines.  And two: masks.  Vaccines are the best defense, but masks are extremely helpful as well.

And for those who aren’t eligible for the vaccine yet — children under the age of 12 — masks are the best available protection for them and the adults around them.  That’s why we need to make sure children are wearing masks in school.

Before I talk about the news related to vaccines, let me say a few words about masks and our children. 

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen throughout this pandemic, some politicians are trying to turn public safety measures — that is, children wearing masks in school — into political disputes for their own political gain.  Some are even trying to take power away from local educators by banning masks in school.  They’re setting a dangerous tone.

For example, last week, at a schoolboard meeting in Tennessee, protestors threatened doctors and nurses who were testifying, making the case for masking children in schools. 

The intimidation and the threats we’re seeing across the country are wrong.  They’re unacceptable.

And I’ve said before, this isn’t about politics.  It’s about keeping our children safe.  This is about taking on the virus together, united.

I’ve made it clear that I will stand with those who are trying to do the right thing.

Last week, I called school superintendents in Florida and Arizona to thank them for doing the right thing and requiring masks in their schools.  One of them said, “We teach science, so we follow the science.”  The other said they have a guiding principle: “Students first.”  I couldn’t agree with more than –I just couldn’t agree more with what they both said.

And that’s why, today, I am directing the Secretary of Education — an educator himself — to take additional steps to protect our children.  This includes using all of his oversight authorities and legal actions, if appropriate, against governors

who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials and educators.

As I’ve said before, if you aren’t going to fight COVID-19, at least get out of the way of everyone else who is trying.  You know, we’re not going to sit by as governors try to block and intimidate educators protecting our children.

For example, if a governor wants to cut the pay of a hardworking education leader who requires masks in the classroom, the money from the American Rescue Plan can be used to pay that person’s salary — 100 percent.

I’m going to say a lot more about children and schools next week.  But as we head into the school year, remember this: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the CDC — says masks are critical, especially for those who are not yet vaccinated, like our children under the age of 12. 

So, let’s put politics aside.

Let’s follow the educators and the scientists who know a lot more about how to teach our children and keep them safe

than any politician. 

This administration is always going to take the side of our children.

Next, I want to talk to those who — of you who can get vaccinated but you haven’t.  The Delta variant is twice as transmissible as the Alpha variant.  It’s dangerous, and it continues to spread.  Vaccines are the key to stopping it, and we’re making progress.

Today, more than 90 percent of seniors have at least had one shot, and 70 percent of people over the age 12 have gotten their first shot as well.  That’s good news, but we need to go faster.

That’s why I’m taking steps on vaccination requirements where I can.  Already, I’ve outlined vaccine requirements.  We’re going reach millions of Americans: federal workers and contractors; medical staff caring for our veterans at VA hospitals; and our active-duty military, reservists, and National Guard.

Today, I’m announcing a new step.  If you work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid, you will also be required to get vaccinated. 

More than 130,000 residents in nursing homes have sa- — have sadly, over the period of this virus, passed away.

At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country.  The studies show that highly vaccinated nursing home staffs is associated with at least 30 percent less COVID-19 cases among long-term care residents. 

With this announcement, I’m using the power of the federal government, as a payer of healthcare costs, to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors.

These steps are all about keeping people safe and out of harm’s way.

If you walk into a government office building, you should know that federal workers are doing everything possible to keep you safe.

If you’re a veteran seeking care at a VA hospital, you should not be at a greater risk walking into the hospital than you were outside the hospital.

And now, if you visit, live, or work in a nursing home, you should not be at a high risk for contracting COVID from unvaccinated employees.

While I’m mindful that my authority at the federal level is limited, I’m going to continue to look for ways to keep people safe and increase vaccination rates.

And I’m pleased to see the private sector stepping up as well.

In the last week, AT&T, Amtrak, McDonalds — they all announced vaccine requirements.

I recently met with a group of business and education leaders — from United Airlines, to Kaiser Permanente, to Howard University — who are also doing the same thing.

Over 200 health systems, more than 50 in the past two weeks, have announced vaccine requirements.  Colleges and universities are requiring more than 5 million students to be vaccinated as they return to classes this fall.

All of this makes a difference.

The Wall Street Journal reported the share of job postings stating that new hires must be vaccinated has nearly doubled in the past month.

Governors and mayors in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Washington have all announced vaccination requirements. 

So let’s be clear: Vaccination requirements have been around for decades.  Students, healthcare professionals, our troops are typically required to receive vaccines to prevent everything from polio to smallpox to measles to mumps to rubella.

In fact, the reason most people in America don’t worry about polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, and rubella today is because of vaccines.  It only makes sense to require a vaccine that stops the spread of COVID-19.

And it’s time for others to step up.  Employers have more power today to end this pandemic than they have ever had before.  My message is simple: Do the right thing for your employees, consumers, and your businesses.

Let’s remember: The key tool to keeping our economy going strong is to get people vaccinated and at work.

I know that I’ll have your back — they should know I’ll have their back, as I have the back of the states trying to do the right thing as well.

For example, yesterday, I instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency –- FEMA –- to extend full reimbursement through the end of the year to state developments — to state deployments of National Guard in support of COVID-19 response.

Nearly 18,000 National Guard members are supporting our response nationwide, from caring for patients, to administering vaccines, to running testing sites, to distributing supplies.

As the states continue to recover from the economic toll left by COVID-19, the full reimbursement of National Guard services during this pandemic will be another tool that will help them shore up their budgets, meet the needs of their communities, and continue our ec- — our economic recovery. 

These are the latest steps we’re taking to get more people vaccinated.

Next, I want to speak to you all — all of you who are vaccinated.  How should you be thinking about the moment we’re in?

First, know that you’re highly protected against severe illness and death from COVID-19.  Only a small fraction of people going to the hospital today are those who have been vaccinated.

But we have a responsibility to give the maximum amount of protection — all of you the maximum amount.

Earlier today, our medical experts announced a plan for booster shots to every fully vaccinated American — adult American.  You know, this shot will boost your immune response.  It will increase your protection from COVID-19.  And it’s the best way to protect ourselves from new variants that could arise.

The plan is for every az- — every adult to get a booster shot eight months after you got your second shot.

Pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC’s Committee of outside experts, we’ll be ready to start these booster — this booster program during the week of September 20, in which time anyone fully vaccinated on or before January 20 will be eligible to get a booster shot.

So that means that if you got your second shot on February 15th, you’re eligible to get your booster shot on October 15th.  If you got your second shot on March 15th, go for your booster starting on November 15th.  And so on.

Just remember, as a simple rule — rule: Eight months after your second shot, get a booster shot.

And these booster shots are free.  We’d be able to get the booster shots at any one of the approximately 80,000 vaccination locations nationwide. 

It will be easy.  Just show your vaccination card and you’ll get a booster.  No other ID.  No insurance.  No state residency requirement.

My administration has been planning for this possibility and this scenario for months.  We purchased enough vaccine and vaccine supplies so that when your eight-month mark comes up, you’ll be ready to get your vaccination free — that booster shot free.  And we have it available.

It will make you safer and for longer.  And it will help us end the pandemic faster. 

Now, I know there are some world leaders who say Americans shouldn’t get a third shot until other countries got their first shots.  I disagree.  We can take care of America and help the world at the same time. 

In June and July, America administered 50 million shots here in the United States and we donated 100 million shots to other countries.  That means that America has donated more vaccine to other countries than every other country in the world combined.

During the coming months of fall and early winter, we expect to give out another — about 100 thousand [million] boosters, and the United States will donate more than 200 million additional doses to other countries.

This will keep us on our way to meeting our pledge of more than 600 million vaccine donations — over half a billion.

And I said — as I said before, we’re going to be the arsenal of vaccines to beat this pandemic as we were the arsenal of democracy to win World War Two.

So, let me conclude with this: The threat of the Delta virus remains real.  But we are prepared.  We have the tools.  We can do this.

To all those of who are unvaccinated: Please get vaccinated for yourself and for your loved ones, your neighborhood and for your community.

And to the rest of America, this is no time to let our guard down.  We just need to finish the job with science, with facts, and with confidence. 

And together, as the United States of America, we’ll get this done. 

God bless you all.  And may God protect our troops.  Thank you. 

4:47 P.M. EDT

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Coronavirus Disease 2019

The coronavirus speech i’d give, realistic reasons for hope..

Posted March 21, 2020 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Updated: Apr. 24, 2020

The media’s core message on the coronavirus is that even if we behave, coronavirus will change life as we know it for years to come: massive job loss, disease, and yes, death, rivaling the Spanish Flu, which killed 50 to 100 million people.

Perhaps a perspective from someone with little to gain from sensationalism nor from political blaming might replace some of the fear with realistic hope.

There are at least three reasons for realistic hope that the coronavirus problem will be satisfactorily addressed than is feared:

1. A simpler, faster test is here: Abbott Laboratories have developed a COVID-19 test that produces the results in five minutes, onsite, and the FDA has just authorized the first at-home swab test.

2. As of April 6, there were more than 200 coronavirus vaccines and treatments in development. It would seem that with some of the world's greatest minds working tirelessly, one will be developed, again, sooner than later. The WHO says that an effective treatment is likely just weeks or months away.

3. Social distancing works and in the U.S. compliance has risen to over 90 percent as of April 15, and since then, subjectively, I've noted ever greater compliance.

So live your life. Sure, practice social distancing, wear a mask in stores, and wash your hands often, but also take advantage of the slowed economy to do things you had wished you had time to do: Speak with friends, do a hobby, do volunteer work by phone or on the internet. Upgrade your skills and networking connections so when the economy and job market improves, you'll be ready. Love more.

Society will survive the coronavirus pandemic, not just because of improved preparedness for an epidemic but because we’ll live with a greater sense of perspective and appreciation of life’s small pleasures: from that first bite of food to the beauty of your loved ones to more present conversations with friends and family. Don’t let coronavirus deprive you of life's wonders. Live.

For some silver linings in the coronavirus situation, you might want to read my previous post, " My Shelter Diary ," including the excellent comment by "Your Reader in Pennsylvania."

I read this aloud on YouTube.

Marty Nemko, Ph.D ., is a career and personal coach based in Oakland, California, and the author of 10 books.

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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student voice: findings and recommendations

The vast majority of young people, lost out on opportunities to have their voice heard and to learn the competences to assert their rights as a result of the pandemic. Student decision-making regarding school life was deeply impacted, with about one-third of teachers saying that students were never given the opportunity to participate in decision-making during lockdown. While school closures reduced the physical spaces for freedom of expression and civic participation, the study provides insights into how student creativity thrived online during that time.

This study provides a reflection on the overall loss in opportunities and learning on student voice during the pandemic, as well as recommendations for school directors and personnel, teachers, educators, policy-makers and young people on how to address this loss. It highlights the importance of prioritizing student voice, especially for students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds to counter inequalities and promote healthier democracies.

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Are you looking to write a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic?

Writing a compelling and informative essay about this global crisis can be challenging. It requires researching the latest information, understanding the facts, and presenting your argument persuasively.

But don’t worry! with some guidance from experts, you’ll be able to write an effective and persuasive essay about Covid-19.

In this blog post, we’ll outline the basics of writing a persuasive essay . We’ll provide clear examples, helpful tips, and essential information for crafting your own persuasive piece on Covid-19.

Read on to get started on your essay.

• 1. Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 2. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19
• 3. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine
• 4. Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration
• 5. Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19
• 6. Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19
• 7. Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19
• 8. Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

• COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
• Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
• Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

• Introduction
• Background Information
• Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
• Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

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Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively. 

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources 

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback 

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19 

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

• The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
• Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
• The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
• The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
• Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
• The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
• The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
• The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
• Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
• The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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Examining persuasive message type to encourage staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown: A randomized controlled study in Japan

• • We examined persuasive message types in terms of a narrator encouraging self-restraint.
• • Messages from a governor, an expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident were compared.
• • The message from a physician increased intention to stay at home the most.
• • The physician’s message conveyed the crisis of collapse of the medical system.

Behavioral change is the only prevention against the COVID-19 pandemic until vaccines become available. This is the first study to examine the most persuasive message type in terms of narrator difference in encouraging people to stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown.

Participants (n = 1,980) were randomly assigned to five intervention messages (from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of an outbreak area) and a control message. Intention to stay at home before and after reading messages was assessed. A one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s or Games–Howell test was conducted.

Compared with other messages, the message from a physician significantly increased participants’ intention to stay at home in areas with high numbers of people infected (versus a governor, p  = .002; an expert, p  = .023; a resident, p  = .004).

The message from a physician―which conveyed the crisis of overwhelmed hospitals and consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment―increased the intent to stay at home the most.

Practice implications

Health professionals and media operatives may be able to encourage people to stay at home by disseminating the physicians’ messages through media and the internet.

1. Introduction

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has emerged as the largest global pandemic ever experienced [ 1 ]. Experts have proposed that social lockdown will lead to improvements such as controlling the increase in the number of infected individuals and preventing a huge burden on the healthcare system [ [2] , [3] , [4] ]. Governments of many countries across the world have declared local and national social lockdown [ 4 , 5 ]. In April 2020, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency, which allows prefectural governors to request residents to refrain from unnecessary and nonurgent outings from home [ 6 ]. However, despite such governor declarations, people in various countries have resisted and disregarded calls to stay at home [ [7] , [8] , [9] ]. Because social lockdown is the only existing weapon for prevention of the pandemic until vaccines becomes available to treat COVID-19, behavioral change in individuals regarding staying at home is crucial [ 3 , 4 ]. Many news articles about COVID-19 are published daily by the mass media and over the internet. Such articles convey messages from governors, public health experts, physicians, COVID-19 patients, and residents of outbreak areas, encouraging people to stay at home. This is the first study to examine which narrator’s message is most persuasive in encouraging people to do so during the COVID-19 pandemic and social lockdown.

2.1. Participants and design

Participants were recruited from people registered in a survey company database in Japan. The eligibility criterion was men and women aged 18–69 years. Exclusion criteria were individuals who answered screening questions by stating: that they cannot go out because of illness or disability; that they have been diagnosed with a mental illness; or/and that they or their family members have been infected with COVID-19. A total of 1,980 participants completed the survey from May 9–11, 2020, when the state of emergency covered all prefectures in Japan. Participants were included according to the population composition ratio in Japan nationwide by gender, age, and residential area. Participants were randomly assigned either to a group that received an intervention message (i.e., from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of the outbreak area) or to one that received a control message. The study was registered as a University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry (number: UMIN000040286) on May 1, 2020. The methods of the present study adhered to CONSORT guidelines. The protocol was approved by the ethical review committee at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo (number: 2020032NI). All participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

2.2. Intervention and control messages

We searched news articles about COVID-19 using Yahoo! JAPAN News ( https://news.yahoo.co.jp ), the largest Japanese news portal site. We also searched videos posted by residents of outbreak areas such as New York using YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeJapan ). By referring to these articles and videos, we created five intervention messages from a governor, a public health expert, a physician, a patient, and a resident of an outbreak area. The content of each message encouraged readers to stay at home. We included threat and coping messages in each intervention message based on protection motivation theory (PMT) [ 10 , 11 ]. Appendix A shows the five intervention messages used in this study, translated into English for this report. For a control message we obtained textual information about bruxism from the website of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare ( https://www.e-healthnet.mhlw.go.jp/ ).

2.3. Measures

The primary outcome was intention to stay at home. The secondary outcomes were PMT constructs (i.e., perceived severity, vulnerability, response efficacy, and self-efficacy). Participants responded to two or three questions for each measure (see Appendix B ). These measures were adapted and modified from previous studies [ [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] ]. All primary and secondary outcomes were measured before and after the participants read intervention or control messages, and mean scores were calculated. Higher scores indicated greater intention and perception. All participants were asked for their sociodemographic information before they read intervention or control messages.

2.4. Sample size

Based on the effect size in a previous randomized controlled study [ 16 ], we estimated a small effect size (Cohen’s d  = .20) in the current study. We conducted a power analysis at an alpha error rate of .05 (two-tailed) and a beta error rate of .20. The power analysis indicated that 330 participants were required in each of the intervention and control groups.

2.5. Statistical analysis

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the absolute change in mean values for each measure before and after intervention as the dependent variable and the group assignment as the independent variable. For multiple comparisons, Tukey’s test was conducted on significant main effects where appropriate. The Games–Howell test was performed when the assumption of homogeneity of variances was not satisfied. Additionally, we conducted subgroup analyses including only participants who lived in 13 “specified warning prefectures,” where the number of infected individuals showed a marked increase [ 17 ]. A p value of <.05 was considered significant in all statistical tests. All statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 21.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).

Table 1 shows the participants’ characteristics. Table 2 , Table 3 present a comparison among the five intervention groups using one-way ANOVA and multiple comparisons when including all prefectures and only participants who lived in the specified warning prefectures, respectively. More significant differences between intervention messages were found in the specified warning prefectures compared with all prefectures. In Table 3 , the Games–Howell test indicates that the message from a physician increased participants’ intention to stay at home significantly more than other narrators’ messages (versus a governor, p  = .002; an expert, p  = .023; a resident, p  = .004). Multiple comparisons demonstrated that the message from a physician increased participants’ perceived severity (versus a governor, p  = .015), response efficacy (versus a resident, p  = .014), and self-efficacy (versus a governor, p  = .022; a patient, p  = .009) significantly more than other narrators’ messages.

Participants’ sociodemographic information.

Comparison of amount of change before and after intervention among groups when including all prefectures (N = 1,980).

Comparison of amount of change before and after intervention among groups when including only the “specified warning prefectures” (N = 1,274).

4. Discussion and conclusion

4.1. discussion.

As Appendix A shows, the message from a physician specifically communicated the critical situation of hospitals being overwhelmed and the consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment. Depiction of the crisis of overwhelmed hospitals may have evoked heightened sensation that elicited sensory, affective, and arousal responses in recipients. Social lockdown presumably evoked psychological reactance in many individuals [ 18 ]. Psychological reactance is considered one of the factors that impedes individuals’ staying at home during a pandemic [ 18 ]. Studies of psychological reactance have indicated that heightened sensation is the feature of a message that reduces psychological reactance [ 19 , 20 ]. Additionally, in Japan recommendations by physicians have a strong influence on individuals’ decision making owing to the remnants of paternalism in the patient–physician relationship [ 21 ]. These may constitute the reasons for the message from a physician generating the greatest impact on recipients’ protection motivation.

Public health professionals, governors, media professionals, and other influencers should use messages from physicians and disseminate relevant articles through the media and social networking services to encourage people to stay at home. It is important that health professionals and media have a network and collaborate with one another [ 22 ]. To build relationships and provide reliable resources, health professionals are expected to hold press conferences and study meetings with journalists. Through such networking, journalists can acquire accurate information in dealing with the pandemic, such as using messages from physicians to encourage people to stay at home. Consequently, journalists should disseminate such messages. It is also important that governments, municipalities, medical associations, and other public institutions convey messages from physicians and that the media effectively spread those messages. Owing to the advances of Web 2.0 [ 23 ], health professionals’ grassroots communication with journalists and citizens via social media may provide opportunities for many people to access persuasive messages from physicians.

4.1.1. Limitations

First, the content of the intervention messages in this study may not represent voices of all governors, public health experts, physicians, patients, and residents of outbreak areas. Second, it is not clear from this study which sentences in the intervention message made the most impact on recipients and why. Third, this study assessed intention rather than actual behavior. Finally, it is unclear as to what extent the present findings are generalizable to populations other than the Japanese participants in this study.

4.2. Conclusion

In areas with high numbers of infected people, the message from a physician, which conveyed the crisis of hospitals being overwhelmed and the consequent risk of people being unable to receive treatment, increased the intention to stay at home to a greater extent than other messages from a governor, a public health expert, a patient with COVID-19, and a resident of an outbreak area.

4.3. Practice implications

Governors, health professionals, and media professionals may be able to encourage people to stay at home by disseminating the physicians’ messages through media such as television and newspapers as well as social networking services on the internet.

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (grant number 19K10615).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Tsuyoshi Okuhara: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Funding acquisition. Hiroko Okada: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Takahiro Kiuchi: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgement

We thank Hugh McGonigle, from Edanz Group ( https://en-author-services.edanzgroup.com/ac ), for editing a draft of the manuscript.

Appendix A. 

Intervention: the message from a governor.

The following is a message from the governor of your local area.

Please avoid leaving your house as much as possible.

Staying at home can save lives and prevent the spread of infection.

Intervention: The message from an expert

The following is a message from an infectious disease control expert.

Intervention: The message from a physician

The following is a message from an emergency medical care doctor.

Intervention: The message from a patient

The following is a message from a patient who is infected with the novel coronavirus.

Intervention: The message from a resident

The following is a message from an individual who lives in an area where an outbreak of novel coronavirus has occurred.

A control message

According to the traditional definition, grinding one’s teeth is when somebody makes a sound by strongly grinding the teeth together, usually unconsciously or while asleep. Nowadays, it is often referred to as ‘teeth grinding,’ a term which also covers various actions that we do while awake.

Whether you are sleeping or awake, the non-functional biting habit of grinding one’s teeth dynamically or statically, or clenching one’s teeth, can also be referred to as bruxism (sleep bruxism if it occurs at night). Bruxism can be categorized into the movements of: sliding the upper and lower teeth together like mortar and pestle (grinding); firmly and statically engaging the upper and lower teeth (clenching); and dynamically bringing the upper and lower teeth together with a tap (tapping).

Bruxism is difficult to diagnose, as it often has no noticeable symptoms. Stress and dentition are thought to be causes of bruxism, but it is currently unclear and future research is anticipated.

Splint therapy, which involves the use of a mouthpiece as an artificial plastic covering on one’s teeth, and cognitive behavioral therapy are being researched as treatments for bruxism.

Appendix B. 

All questions above were on a scale of 1–6, ranging from “extremely unlikely” to “unlikely,” “a little unlikely,” “a little likely,” “likely,” and “extremely likely.”

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‘until we meet again’ — baccalaureate and class day at yale.

(Photos by Dan Renzetti)

Yale seniors took in twin messages of healing and human connection on Sunday — one from the nation’s doctor and the other from Yale President Peter Salovey, who gave his final address to students as head of the university.

During the Class Day ceremony on Old Campus, Vice Admiral Vivek H. Murthy, ’03 M.D., ’03 M.B.A., the U.S. surgeon general, urged graduates of Yale College’s Class of 2024, most of whom began their Yale lives during the first year of the pandemic, to fend off feelings of isolation and disconnection by embracing the transformative power of love and friendship.

“ Four years ago, many of you didn’t have an in-person high school graduation because of the pandemic. When you started at Yale, you had to take classes virtually and isolate from each other,” Murthy said to the thousands of students and families in attendance, sitting in rows of white chairs in the green, leafy courtyard.

“ Yet despite facing truly unprecedented circumstances, you persevered, you learned, you built meaningful friendships,” Murthy said. “The togetherness that has come to define your class didn’t just happen. You fought for it. It’s one more reason we are so proud of you today.”

Class Day, held the day before Commencement, is a Yale tradition dating back to the 19 th century when soon-to-be graduates gathered on Old Campus to swap stories about their experiences. It has grown into a festive celebration featuring a notable speaker chosen with input from students, prizes awarded for academic, artistic, and athletic excellence, reflections from class members, and the continuance of Yale symbolic traditions such as Class Ivy and clay churchwarden pipes.

Students marched into the ceremony adorned in (mostly) silly hats — a veritable sea of pizza boxes, pirate tops, plushy toys, traffic pylons, and plants. Some were whimsical: lobsters and balloon antlers, cheese wedges and stuffed animals, dioramas and dragons. Others were political, satirical, or artistic.

Murthy said he’d briefly “borrowed” a student’s banana hat, fitting into the festivities and filling a “gap” in his own college finale (at Harvard), which apparently lacks the festive hat tradition.

Finding your people — at Yale

Murthy’s speech was a heartfelt prescription for finding health and wellness in a complicated world.

The nation’s first surgeon general of Indian descent, Murthy is a leading advocate for mental health and wellness and the author of the bestselling book “Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World” (2020).

As vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he oversees more than 6,000 dedicated public health officers serving underserved and vulnerable populations. Murthy is also the first U.S. surgeon general to host a podcast, “House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy.”

Yet, as he noted in his Class Day address, he too has known feelings of disconnection.

“ When I came to Yale in 1998 as a medical student, I was a shy, introverted young man who had gone through high school and college never quite feeling like I belonged,” he said. “But over eggplant parm dinners at Yorkside [Pizza], snowball fights right here on Old Campus, group sessions in the Starr reading room, and countless late-night conversations walking though campus, I found my people. Curious, quirky, and fiercely kind people who inspired me and made me laugh.

“ Yale blessed me with friends I loved and mentors I treasured. It was here at Yale that I finally found that elusive sense of belonging,” he said.

He also discovered during his time at Yale that the secret campus garden where he would steal away to study and relax was, in fact, the Yale president’s backyard.

Murthy said Yale’s greatest gift to him was his future wife, Alice Chen, a Yale College grad he met years later while working on health care advocacy. In 2015, Murthy and Chen returned to campus, where he proposed to her next to the lipstick sculpture at Morse College.

“ She has been my rock and my compass all these years,” Murthy said, briefly overwhelmed with emotion, as the audience cheered.

He also took a moment to consider the arc of his family’s experience — from the life of his grandfather, a village farmer in India; to his father and mother, physicians who made their way to the U.S. and opened a primary care clinic in Miami; to his own story.

“ Despite all our challenges and heartbreaks as a nation, I stand before you fully aware that in few other countries in the world could the grandson of a poor farmer from India be asked by the president to look out for the health of the entire nation,” Murthy said. “That is the power and promise of America. And I will forever be grateful for it.”

Slideshow: Scenes from Class Day 2024

View Slideshow 14 Photos

Being present, being real, and showing up

Murthy told his Yale audience that love, relationships, and honest personal connections are essential to finding fulfillment in a world of change.

He brought that message home with three personal stories about “being present,” “being real,” and “showing up.”

First, he said, was the time in medical school when a classmate’s father needed emergency surgery. Murthy was surprised to learn that the father’s favorite clinician was the surgeon who woke him up in the hospital each morning and only interacted with him for five minutes.

“ It was what he did in those five minutes that made all the difference,” Murthy said. “He sat on the bed next to his patient. He held his hand. He looked into his eyes. … Remember that your presence has the power to stretch time, to make five minutes feel like half an hour, and to leave someone else feeling seen and valued. In a world where so many people feel invisible, your presence can help others heal.”

Murthy talked about the abrupt end to his first tenure as surgeon general, in 2017 — and how he felt self-doubt creeping into his thoughts as he pondered what to do next in his life. He eventually found the courage to be vulnerable with a circle of close friends and find his way “out of the darkness.”

Lastly, Murthy shared the story of how, when he was an undergraduate, his parents lost their life savings and their medical office to a family friend who emerged as an international con artist. When his family went to retrieve items from the office, other true friends simply appeared with boxes to help them move out and move on.

“ They didn’t wait for an invitation. They showed up. They listened. They helped. Most of all, they just reminded us that we weren’t alone,” Murthy said.

Baccalaureate address: ‘Choosing love and compassion’

Earlier in the day, in his final Baccalaureate address as Yale’s leader, also on Old Campus, President Peter Salovey issued a similar call for compassion and kindness, weaving together moments of personal history with national flashpoints of forgiveness and grace.

Salovey spoke of his grandparents’ arrival in an America marked by promise and prejudice. He lauded philosopher Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “faculty of forgiving” as the opposite of vengeance. He marveled at the communities of faith that converged during the contentious Civil Rights era, such as when Rabbi Everett Gendler — father of Tamar Gendler, current dean of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences — marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965.

Several years later, in 1968, King spoke to Rabbi Gendler about his desire for a movement to “transmute rage into a positive, constructive force.”

“ Those words resonate today,” Salovey said in his address, “Love and Compassion .” “They remind us that we need to reject hate and rage — and instead find our common love for life, for community, and for peace.

“ Now, to be sure, the challenges before us — climate change, racial injustice, armed conflict, and extremism, to name only a few — stoke the indignation of any individual of conscience. And across this country, we’ve seen rising antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of bigotry. Without anger, we would be reconciled to accept the unacceptable, tolerate the intolerable, and thereby consign ourselves to a status quo in need of repair. Without anger, we would be bereft of the fuel necessary to fight against prejudice and violence around the globe.

“ So, what, then, are the grounds that support the translation of outrage into compassion, as Dr. King advised?” Salovey asked.

Perhaps, he suggested, an answer may be found in the life and poetry of eminent Yale graduate and civil rights leader Pauli Murray.

Murray wrote:

But love, alas, holds me captive here

Consigned to sacrificial flame, to burn

And find no heart’s surcease until

Its more enduring uses I may learn.

In 1963, Salovey noted, Murray, an African American, defended the campus appearance of George Wallace, the controversial Alabama governor whose racist invectives and potential visit ignited controversy at Yale. Murray, a law student at the time, wrote to Yale President Kingman Brewster supporting Wallace’s right to speak at Yale.

“ By every cultural, spiritual, and psychological resource at my disposal,” Murray wrote, “I shall seek to destroy the institution of segregation…[but] I will not submit to segregation myself.”

Such moments of intellectual bravery and individual humanity are hallmarks of the Yale ethos, Salovey said.

“ Progress depends on our willingness to work together to solve common problems: to extend love and grace, compassion and cooperation, with one another, and, through these means, to build consensus.

“ By bridging differences — by daring to choose love and compassion over rage and hate — we can bring about the meaningful, sustainable change needed in society. We can bring the world you will soon enter a little closer to the one we desire.

“ Let’s get started together,” Salovey said. “Let’s get started today.”

Salovey, who this summer plans to yield the Yale presidency to a successor and resume a full time role as a faculty member, ended his address with the Hebrew phrase L’heit ra-oat — “until we meet again.”

Slideshow: Scenes from the 2024 Baccalaureate ceremony

View Slideshow 13 Photos

Prizes and goodbyes

The Class Day ceremony, which like the Baccalaureate was broadcast live online, additionally featured the conferral of prizes to outstanding Yale seniors, as well as speeches and reflections from members of the Class of 2024.

The event began with a live performance of an original song, “Beauty in the Leaving,” written by senior Khatumu Tuchscherer, and performed by seniors Tuchscherer, Natalia Artz, Anjali Wang Gupta, Rodrigo Ortiz Mena Martinez, and William Salaverry.

Class Day committee members Jad Bataha, Hedy Tung, and Olivia Zhang gave Murthy’s introduction; committee members Alex Ori, Molly Fallek, and Edmund Zheng presented background on Class Day traditions, such as the white handkerchiefs that members of the graduating class wave at the end of the ceremony and the Church Warden pipes (now filled with bubbles) that early Yale students would break as a symbol of the end of carefree college life.

Alanah Armstead, Daya Butler, and Rosie Rothschild requested a moment of silence for lost loved ones and introduced the “Class History,” a compilation of photos and video from the students’ time at Yale. Josh Atwater gave a class reflection on watching New Haven wake up each morning as he delivered copies of the Yale Daily News and witnessing the care and dedication of Yale dining hall and facilities staff. Rachel Brown and Adriana Golden performed a comedy sketch.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, as students strode confidently toward their futures, senior Mary Ben Apatoff did some reflecting of her own about the speeches she’d heard.

Apatoff, an environmental engineering student from New York City, sported a bike helmet adorned with flowers. She’d set her alarm the night before, so she wouldn’t miss President Salovey’s speech.

“ I liked it a lot,” she said, as students and families flowed around her on High Street. “President Salovey struck a tone that is salient to a lot of us, to a lot of people’s experience. It moved me. His speech, and the surgeon general speech, touched on things that any graduate can relate to.”

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Opinion | From COVID-19 to campus protests: How the police state muzzles free speech

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies ; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

And now, when they should be empowered to take their rightful place in society as citizens who fully understand and exercise their right to speak truth to power, they are being censored, silenced and shut down.

Consider what happened recently in Charlottesville, Va., when riot police were called in to shut down campus protests at the University of Virginia staged by students and members of the community to express their opposition to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

As the local newspaper reported, “State police sporting tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, using pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the roughly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, faculty and community members had sang songs, read poetry and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.”

What a sad turn-about for an institution which was founded as an experiment in cultivating an informed citizenry by Thomas Jefferson , the author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s third president.

Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not unique in its heavy-handed response to what have been largely peaceful anti-war protests. According to the Washington Post , more than 2300 people have been arrested for taking part in similar campus protests across the country.

These lessons in compliance, while expected, are what comes of challenging the police state.

Free speech can certainly not be considered “free” when expressive activities across the nation are being increasingly limited, restricted to so-called free speech zones, or altogether blocked.

Remember, the First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.”

Along with the constitutional right to peacefully (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free speech allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to attempt to change the world around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.

If citizens cannot stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies without fearing prosecution, then the First Amendment with all its robust protections for free speech, assembly and the right to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances is little more than window-dressing on a store window—pretty to look at but serving little real purpose.

After all, living in a representative republic means that each person has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, whether that means marching outside the halls of government, wearing clothing with provocative statements, or simply holding up a sign.

That’s what the First Amendment is supposed to be about: it assures the citizenry of the right to express their concerns about their government to their government, in a time, place and manner best suited to ensuring that those concerns are heard.

Unfortunately, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rulings, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it with little more meaning than the right to file a lawsuit against government officials.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.

Clearly, the government has no interest in hearing what “we the people” have to say.

Yet if Americans are not able to peacefully assemble for expressive activity outside of the halls of government or on public roads on which government officials must pass, or on college campuses, the First Amendment has lost all meaning.

And if we cannot proclaim our feelings about the government, no matter how controversial, on our clothing, or to passersby, or to the users of the world wide web, then the First Amendment really has become an exercise in futility.

The source of the protest shouldn’t matter. The politics of the protesters are immaterial.

To play politics with the First Amendment encourages a double standard that will see us all muzzled in the end.

The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

If ever there were a time for us to stand up for the right to speak freely, even if it’s freedom for speech we hate, the time is now.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute . His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People , the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State , and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries . Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected] . Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org .

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Berkeley Talks: Berkeley commencement speeches celebrate resilience, bravery

By Public Affairs

May 17, 2024

Follow  Berkeley Talks , a  Berkeley News  podcast that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley.  See all  Berkeley Talks .

Brittany Hosea-Small for UC Berkeley

In  Berkeley Talks  episode 197, we’re sharing a selection of speeches from UC Berkeley’s campuswide commencement ceremony on May 11. The first speech is by Chancellor Christ, followed by ASUC President Sydney Roberts and ending with keynote speaker Cynt Marshall, a Berkeley alum and CEO of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

“I believe the future of our democracy depends on our ability to engage in civil discourse across the divides and reject the forces of division and polarization,” Christ began, as hundreds of graduates chanted in protest of the war in Gaza. “Given recent events and the scourge of COVID, I can only marvel at how you’ve navigated these complicated times. 

“Your presence here today is a testimony to a remarkable accomplishment whose meaning and worth will serve you well in the days to come. We could not be prouder.”

[ Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions ]

Intro:  This is  Berkeley Talks , a  Berkeley News  podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. You can follow  Berkeley Talks  wherever you listen to your podcasts. New episodes come out every other Friday. Also, we have another podcast,  Berkeley Voices , that shares stories of people at UC Berkeley and the work that they do on and off campus.

[Music fades out]

Carol Christ:  Let me begin by offering my heartfelt congratulations to you the members of this remarkable and resilient graduating class. Though the fate sought fit to place unprecedented challenges in your path, you kept your eyes on the prize, you persevered, and you have prevailed.

Before I begin my graduation remarks, I want to say a few words about the protest on campus. Students have been camping around Sproul Hall for almost three weeks. They feel passionately about the brutality of the violence in Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, and the destruction of educational institutions and vital infrastructure. I, too, am deeply troubled by the terrible tragedy unfolding in Gaza.

The encampment. The encampment is civil disobedience of the sort Berkeley has long witnessed and my efforts to bring it to a peaceful end are in line with how this university has historically dealt with similar protests. I also mourn the terrible killing of civilians in Israel during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and I’m distressed by the continued imprisonment of Israeli hostages. I’m saddened by how this conflict has divided students, faculty and staff.

While most of our campus community has engaged peacefully, political positions have bled over too easily and quickly to anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian harassment. I have no tolerance for either. We have lost the ability to talk with one another. I feel passionately that we must work to regain this capacity whatever our beliefs and perspectives. It is my hope that we can soon find a way to recognize our shared humanity.

As you prepare for the next stage of your lives, I hope you will reflect on these issues. I believe the future of our democracy depends on our ability to engage in civil discourse across the divides and reject the forces of division and polarization. Given recent events and the scourge of COVID, I can only marvel at how you’ve navigated these complicated times. Your presence here today is a testimony to a remarkable accomplishment whose meaning and worth will serve you well in the days to come. We could not be prouder.

While this is a day to celebrate your achievement, there’s no time like now to express gratitude to and for everyone who has helped you arrive at one of life’s great milestones. So let us also take a moment to celebrate and thank those who have supported and stood by you through thick and thin. Let us take this opportunity to express respect and appreciation for this university’s extraordinary faculty and staff who have risen for you and together with you to sustain Berkeley’s character and quality.

What animates Berkeley is our belief in and commitment to individual and institutional agency. The notion that through the discovery, development, dissemination and discussion of knowledge we can make the world a better place. We have before us extraordinary opportunities to extract and apply valuable lessons from all that we’re witnessing and experiencing. These unprecedented times offer unprecedented opportunities for learning about ourselves, the communities and causes we draw strength, meaning, and support from, and about the role of our university in our lives, our nation, and our world.

Now more than ever, the world needs all that you have to offer as the beneficiaries of a Berkeley education and experience as change-makers committed to advancing the greater good. Today, as you stand at one of life’s great crossroads, take a deep breath, pause, reflect, and consider the road you’ve traveled and all that you can and will carry with you from Berkeley into your personal and professional futures. I can only hope you share the gratitude I feel for these attributes, values and aspirations that form the foundation of all that Berkeley is and stands for.

Before I conclude, I want to share how pleased I am to have UC Regent John Peréz with us today. He’s a true Cal Bear and has dedicated his career to public service as a labor leader, speaker of the Assembly, and now as a UC Regent. His support for and contributions to our university have been extraordinary and he’s been a tireless advocate for keeping the cost of education affordable, equitable, and predictable, and for a student body that better reflects the people of California. I’ve been grateful for his partnership. There’s no greater champion of UC, Berkeley than Regent John Peréz.

My parting wish for you, may your years ahead be richly rewarding and fulfilling and may you enjoy much happiness. Hold tight to all the things you carry from Berkeley and may they always serve you and the world around you well. We’re immensely proud of what you’ve done and even more of who you will become, Fiat Lux and go Bears. I would now like to introduce you to our ASUC president, a proud member of the class of 2024. Please join me in welcoming Sydney Roberts.

Sydney Roberts:  Hello, class of 2024. It is with great honor and humility that I stand before you this morning. Congratulations on accomplishing this significant milestone. And thank you to every beloved family member and friend here in support of a graduate.

Like many of you, I came to UC Berkeley to be a part of a university that not only values academic excellence but strives to make a difference in the world. Gratefully, I am confident I can say I made the right choice, but I’ve realized that it’s not the university itself that attracted me. It was the students. I wanted to be a part of the legacy that is our student body. We are the driving force and the heart behind this institution’s greatness. Throughout my time here, I’ve witnessed students commit ordinary acts of bravery. And I don’t mean adding an 8 a.m. to your schedule.

I’d like to say though, in the face of global challenges, we have adapted and persevered. We created community despite remote learning, and this year in particular has tested our resolve. As a student leader and as a friend to many impacted by the crippling loss overseas, and as a witness to the intense division on college campuses nationwide, I have felt deep grief, powerlessness, even hopelessness. Like many of you, I think we can do more to limit the loss and to support our peers.

So today I do have one request: Do not run from these emotions. Let your compassion motivate you to take agency. Use it to engage in conversation. Because this would not be the first time that UC Berkeley’s student activism led to global change. Time and time again, we’ve challenged what society expects us to accept. We came here with a deep desire to make an impact, whether that’s participating in a scientific discovery or a political movement. We now have the tools to embark on new journeys and to impart what we’ve learned here in a meaningful way. So amid everything that happened this year, remember the community that you were a part of and the progress you found.

On a much smaller scale, we did come together this year. We successfully advocated to retain our Berkeley emails, which may seem so simple, but it signifies a large part of who we are. With it, we’ll be able to stay connected, we’ll be able to demonstrate our academic achievement and we’ll always remember the values that bond us together. And of course we have much more to accomplish, but we are the type of leaders who create more leaders.

So today we graduate and celebrate and tomorrow we pay it forward. We all have someone who held the door open for us to experience greater opportunities, whether that was an ancestor who pushed boundaries or a parent who showed us unconditional love or a mentor who believed in us. Let us now commit to being that source of support for someone else.

Let us also show gratitude to those who supported us every step of the way. I want to thank the people in my life who made this possible for me, my grandparents, my mother, sisters, my East Coast family. Thank you so much for encouraging me to challenge myself and for always supporting me along this journey. I also want to thank my friends for becoming my support system away from home.

So as we bid UC Berkeley farewell, let us do so with a sense of pride and purpose. Let us never forget the bond that unites us all, our commitment to excellence and compassion. The world awaits our brilliance and our relentless pursuit to make a difference. So congratulations, class of 2024 and go Bears for life.

Sarah Turobiner:  It is my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Cynt Marshall. A lifelong pioneer Cynt was the first African American cheerleader at UC Berkeley and the first in her family to graduate from college. She worked for more than three decades as a leader of AT&T. After retiring in 2017, she thought she’d pursue a second career perhaps as a college president, before the Dallas Mavericks recruited her as the first African American female CEO in the NBA. I invite Kirk Tramble, president of the Cal Alumni Association and Cynt to the podium, where Kirk will present her with a resolution that recognizes her distinguished service.

Cynt, as your book title suggests, you have been chosen to share your stories and wisdom with the class of 2024. Thank you, the mic is yours.

Cynt Marshall:  Class of 2024, this is your day. Are you over there? I am so honored to be back in my home state at the best place on the planet, my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley. Today we are celebrating 7,000 students. Most of them did not have a senior, prom or high school graduation.

So today is extra special. Yes, it’s a little lively, it’s a little noisy, but we are celebrating these 7,000 students today. I am so proud to be here on this historic campus. We’re where 60 years ago the free speech movement began. And while there are many national and international issues to boldly speak up about, I want to lift my voice today for these resilient scholars who have been equipped with the skills to lead, contribute to, change, and take over the world. Scholars, are you ready, class of 2024, to take over the world?

I remember my college graduation day. I was sitting at the ceremony thinking about a call I had to make. I’m sure some of you are a tad distracted right now like I was. You’re probably more distracted than I was. You see, during my first week at Cal, my boyfriend, who was one year ahead of me, called to tell me that he had transferred schools.

He said, “Surprise Cynt, I’ve transferred to San Francisco State University so I can be near you.” I responded, “I have a surprise for you, boyfriend. I will call you when I graduate.” Remember, it was my first week of college. I told him that I didn’t have time for some smooth talking cutie who wanted to play when I needed to study. This girl from the Easter Hill public housing projects in Richmond, California was serious about her college opportunity. People had big dreams for me and I needed to focus and handle my business, tell somebody she handled her business.

So I graduated at 2 p.m. and I called him at 3 p.m. Since he hadn’t talked to me in almost four years, the brother tried to act like he didn’t know who I was. I invited him to my graduation party and he said he couldn’t come. He even tried to say that he was engaged. However, something happened and he came to the party. Last week, we celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary. I often tell my husband that he came that close to missing his blessing. So if you have a call to make, just give me 15 minutes and I will be out of your way.

Chancellor Christ, thank you for your service, your devotion, commitment and leadership. Thank you for modeling our guiding values and principles of diversity, excellence, innovation, public mission, accountability and transparency. You will be sorely missed. Board of Regents, my colleagues on the board of Visitors, Kirk Tramble, faculty and administration, congratulations on your many accomplishments, including once again and for the past nine years being named the number one public school in the country.

Sydney and Sarah, thank you for your extraordinary leadership of the student body and this amazing graduating class. Parents and loved ones, thank you for laying the foundation for our graduates to reach this important milestone in their lives. They sit here today because of your unconditional love, your faith in their journey, your limitless credit card, and your tolerance for unending text messages and midnight calls. Give it up for that unending credit card. Unlimited credit card. You have invested a lot in your young person. Today, you are getting the return on your investment.

Class of 2024, please stand and express some gratitude to your moms, your dads, your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, and all of the members of your village. They got you here today.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Graduates. Graduates, a few years ago you became a part of something very special. I did too when my feet landed on this campus. I remember standing under Sather Gate and looking up at the Campanile. Everything was so big. I remember walking into 1 PSL, a lecture hall with a thousand people and most of them did not look like me. I remember having to quickly find a quiet study place because the classwork was suddenly a little harder than high school. Enter Moffett and Doe Libraries into my nightlife. I remember how special it was meeting the girl from Long Beach, Yvonne Vallier, who became and still is my very best friend, and she is here somewhere today.

I also remember the young man who drove me home after class one day, asked me if he was pulling into the projects, and then decided he didn’t want to have anything to do with me because of where I lived. Now, my mama always told me, it’s now where you live, it’s how you live. That’s how Carolyn Gardener ran her house. She told us not to be ashamed of where we lived, but I guess this young man didn’t want a friend from the projects.

Somehow that changed when he saw me two years later in this very stadium performing on the Cal cheer and dance team. One day he even tried … Yes, any cheerleaders and dance team members in the house. Yes.  One day he even tried to chase me down as I was walking to the DG House at 2710 Channing Way. Anchors away, DGs. I was so proud of my new house and I was still very proud of my old house in the projects.

Fortunately, most people didn’t care about my zip code. I was embraced by amazing people who were dedicated to preparing me for the next phase of life. Class of 2024, you have also been embraced by amazing people who taught and cared for you during very turbulent times. Class of ’24, please stand one more time and give a thunderous round of applause to the people who nurtured you during a critical period of growth in your life. Your incredible faculty, administrators, and staff. Thank you.

Now, while these wonderful people are still available to you, they have left the next chapter of life up to you. In my world, I think of the next chapter as a new season and the message to you, class of 2024, is the ball is in your hands. Now, certainly you didn’t think that you were going to leave today without getting a sports-related message from me, the CEO of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, where a former … Jim Knowlton, I see they like sports in here. Where a former California Golden Bear, Hall of Famer Jason Kidd is the head coach. And of course there’s baseball’s World Series champion and Cal alum, Marcus Semien.

So OK, I need everyone, our graduates and everyone to look at someone, look at them and smile, and tell them, “Neighbor.” OK, I need to hear you. “Neighbor, the ball is in your hands.” Now, I grew up in a Pentecostal church and we had a lot of neighbors and we were noisy. Don’t get nervous, I’m going to let you out before midnight. Find someone else to smile. Find someone else and tell them, “Neighbor, the ball is in your hands.” Do we have any basketball, baseball, football players with us today? How about soccer, volleyball, softball, golf, rugby, lacrosse, water polo, tennis players in the audience? We do all of it here at Berkeley.

At some point, most of you have handled a ball that is unique to a sport, training, or leisure activity. You’ve become familiar with that ball and what to do with it. Scholars, the ball I am talking about today is different. The playing field is global and multidimensional, and the game is more significant, believe it or not, than the Cal-Stanford big game. You are now playing the game of life and your ball is a collection of choices that you get to hold each day. Allow me to give you six things to consider as you embrace this new ball and prepare to play on this new court. Consider this your final lesson at the University of California at Berkeley.

Number one: teammates. Constantly ask yourself who else is on the court with you? Who are you doing life with? Always keep good company. Run with good people who are doing things and who will help you keep your court safe.

Number two: your position. Be mindful of your position on the court. You have a distinct role to play in advancing the ball for society. Give of your time, talent, and treasure. Perhaps you’ll be the one who changes the life forever by teaching someone how to read.

Or maybe you’ll be the one with the public mission mindset who mobilizes people to address an international crisis. Or just maybe you’ll be the one with the means to make other people’s dreams come true. I didn’t know on my college graduation day that I would adopt four children, save them from abuse, abandonment, and neglect, and give them stability and a forever family. Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom once said, “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” Use your position on the court to make a difference in the lives of others.

Number three: tip-off. Once you flip your tassel, the game has begun and the ball has been tipped your way. UC Berkeley has equipped you to pick up the ball and make good decisions. Sometimes you will have many decisions to make and competing priorities.

I like to use a simple illustration of a crystal ball and a rubber ball. Life is filled with crystal balls and rubber balls. If I drop a crystal ball, it will shatter and it will never come back. Rubber balls bounce away for others to take them, or sometimes they will roll back quietly. Know your crystal balls from your rubber balls. Some things are important and some things are not. Some things are urgent and some things can wait.

Number four: ball handling. Handle the ball with character. Don’t cheat. Always tell the truth. Your integrity is not for sale. Class of 2024. Look at somebody next to you and say, “Always do the right thing.” Look at someone else and say, “Always do the right thing.” There is a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing. You have been taught how to do both.

Number five: rebounding. Sometimes you will make a bad decision. Sometimes you will take the shot and miss it. Sometimes the light you see at the end of the tunnel is a train. In the game of life, bad things do happen to good people, but there will always be someone around you to help you rebound with grace.

Some of you broke up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend over the past four years. I know you did. Some of you ran out of money and have to call somebody for what I call that HASU moment, that hook a sister up moment, or maybe hook a brother up. Some of you needed some extra help with that last final exam. Basketball legend Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” Don’t be afraid to miss the shot. Just rebound with grace.

The sixth and final part of this lesson is about player conduct. Play this game of life like a grown-up. I need everybody to look at somebody and tell them it’s time to be grown. Tell somebody else it’s time to be grown. Now, I’m not referring to the grown-up status where you get the privilege of paying your own bills, like you get to pay your bills now, or the kind of grown where you get to go and come as you please and do whatever you want to do. When I say it’s time to be grown, my version of grown — G-R-O-W-N — means this.

G, be grateful. Take time to thank the people in your village who have been and continue to be outstanding and supportive trainers. Never forget the coaching staff of educators who embraced you a few years ago and are proud today to send you into the world. Always display an attitude of gratitude. Keep thank you in your daily vocabulary.

R is be ready. The game of life has some new rules. You need to be in good, physical, mental, and spiritual health to win. I am a stage three colon cancer survivor. I learned the hard way the value of paying attention to all three, physical, mental, and spiritual health, what I call PMS. Everybody needs PMS, physical, mental and spiritual health. Keep your mind, your body and your soul in good shape.

O, be open. Class of 2024, you are a part of a master plan that is bigger than you and not about you. It’s about us and it starts with us. There is a plan that your part is perfectly scripted in. Be open to all opportunities and possibilities. Be open to thoughts and beliefs that differ from your own. Most of you have no idea what profound impact you are about to make on the world. Be open to a future that is unknown, but it’s a future that you will impact and I am counting on you.

W is be willing. Stay alert to injustices in society. You are equipped and able to stand up to hate and evil. Be willing to do your part to create a more just equal, inclusive, and equitable world. Be willing to pay what I call the fee for admission to work, live and play in this society. The fee, F-E-E, is fairness, engagement of all and equality. Practice it and pursue it.

N is be nice. My favorite quote is people don’t care how much you know and you get ready to get a Berkeley degree, you know a lot. But people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Be caring, be kind. Never underestimate the power of nice. You will conquer the world with kindness and compassion.

So class of 2024, you’re at center court and it’s time for tip-off. The game is about to begin. Always keep good teammates. Give of your time, talent and treasure. Know your crystal balls from your rubber balls. Do the right thing, rebound with grace and conduct yourself like a grownup. Grateful, ready, open, willing and nice.

May God bless your hands as you pick up the ball. May God bless your feet as you take to the court. May you always cherish and tell others about your days at Cal.

In the words of my friend and Cal alum, Ahmad Anderson, remember this: You know it, you tell the story. You tell the whole darn world this is Bear territory. OK? Come on. You know it. You tell the story. You tell the whole darn world this is Bear territory.

My fellow Golden Bears class of 2024, you handled your business. Congratulations, the ball is in your hands!

[ Music: “Silver Lanyard” by Blue Dot Sessions ]

Outro:  You’ve been listening to  Berkeley Talks , a  Berkeley News  podcast from the Office of Communications and Public Affairs that features lectures and conversations at UC Berkeley. Follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find all of our podcast episodes, with transcripts and photos, on  Berkeley News  at news.berkeley.edu/podcasts.

Read and watch more about the class of 2024:

• Accompanied by protests, UC Berkeley graduates celebrate a milestone
• Watch UC Berkeley’s 2024 commencement ceremony
• ‘The ball is in your hands,’ keynote speaker tells Berkeley graduates
• Chancellor Christ to grads: ‘The world needs all that you have to offer’
• University Medalist to graduates: Look beyond the label
• Tutoring at San Quentin helped UC Berkeley’s top senior define his future
• Forced into COVID-era isolation, University Medal finalists embraced resilience, compassion

Listen to other episodes of  Berkeley Talks: