Repression of Migrants and Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Learning from 21st-Century and 18th-Century Syria

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies presents

Aaron David Shakow, PhD
Lecturer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

This talk will discuss tuberculosis among Syrian migrants in Lebanon and how the response to it illustrates key features of the international migration regime more generally. Shakow will unpack the relationship between immigration control and international public health, and show how sickness in eighteenth century Syria helped create the current infrastructure of migration control.

Dr. Aaron Shakow is a lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. From 2017-2021, he was director of the Initiative on Healing and Humanity at the Harvard-Dubai Center for Global Health Delivery, an interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars in the social sciences and humanities and frontline health care delivery institutions. A longtime member of Partners In Health, Dr. Shakow played a key role in the group's work on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, serving as a policy adviser at the World Health Organization during the "3 x 5" campaign to expand global access to antiretroviral therapy.  He recently co-edited "Privilege and Impunity: The Struggle for Accountability in Global Health," forthcoming from Duke University Press. A current book project, with Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee, is titled "Bait and Switch: Democracy Versus Global Health." Dr. Shakow has taught history at Harvard, MIT and Brandeis, and edited the journal "Health and Human Rights." He received his PhD from Harvard University.

Contact: Liz Flanagan