This week in my enterprise risk management course we’re looking at risk and innovation. Our guest this evening is Anson Fatland, UW Associate Vice Provost for Innovation Strategy and Venture at CoMotion, the university’s innovation and technology transfer program.

What I had not anticipated was the level of exhaustion that comes with teaching under such circumstances.

The number of students joining the class stopped mid-week last. We’re down to 33 students, along with myself and my teaching assistant, Roshani Ravi.

About three weeks ago, I opened my Wall Street Journal to find the first article in a series called “The Facebook Files,” which is based on a series of internal Facebook documents provided by a former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen.

I am today completing my second week of teaching in person. My course is an undergraduate course in the iSchool’s Informatics program. Though it’s is an elective for Informatics majors pursuing the cybersecurity specialization, I find those students outnumbered by those who come from Computer Science or from the College of Arts and Sciences. I like the kind of diversity of thought that such backgrounds will produce.

Yesterday, students and faculty returned to classroom learning at the University of Washington. In that mix, you could find those of us (faculty, juniors, seniors and some graduate students) who were glad to be back — but freshmen and sophomores both are new to the campus after that 18 month COVID pivot to remote learning.

"If we do not believe that something positive and larger than ourselves can be created from the deaths and destruction of 9/11, then we have only anger, pain, or bitterness to sustain us in our recollections of that day." -- September 12, 2011

However closely we were following the COVID crisis in the past 17 months, we never expected to find ourselves in this situation, especially not once we had vaccines available.

I was reminded recently of the variety of positions I’ve held in my career and was asked to say how they contributed to my world view.

As we come up for air and look around, it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is not nearly over. Just yesterday the president pledged a half a billion doses to marginalized countries, matched by other members of the G7, as new variants of the virus appear. At home, there are still too many states where low vaccination rates may be a reflection of conspiracy theories. A single political party remains united behind the former president, determined to stymie sweeping proposals on infrastructure, voting rights and on the creation of a January 6th Commission.