Recent Harvard College Grads Discuss COVID-19 Response with Foreign Leaders through Online Interview Project

Developed by two recent College graduates, the Bridging Borders Project is an online, weekly series of recorded conversations with foreign leaders about their governments’ responses to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The project — which so far includes 11 episodes — has featured conversations with leaders like Prime Minister Lotay Tshering of Bhutan, President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus, and President Jonathan Nez of the Navajo Nation.

Incoming Harvard Medical School student and Rhodes Scholar Sai S. S. Rajagopal ’19, a co-host of the project, said he was initially inspired to explore the COVID-19 responses of various nations based on differences in response that he observed between the United States and Canada.

“We saw that the response in America was significantly slower and less meaningful than what was happening in Canada,” Rajagopal said. “So we thought that there was a way that we could kind of potentially create cross-talk if we could bring leaders onto our show from a lot of different nations and hopefully cue in the American listener to get them hearing what was happening in other countries and how they were successfully, or not, responding to the pandemic.”

Project co-host Henna Hundal ’19 said she and Rajagopal were friends during their time at the College, which helped spark the project.

“Sai and I were the first people that we each met when we arrived at Harvard, so it has been a fruitful partnership,” Hundal said. “I would say that we both bring a genuine curiosity, which is so important, since we do hours and hours of research just trying to understand the context before going into each episode.”

Rajagopal noted the project has so far unearthed border regulation to be one of the most disparate pandemic policy measures among nations. He also shared, however, that many leaders are in agreement over the importance of “deferring to the expertise of healthcare experts.”

Rajagopal noted while the project currently consists of recorded interviews, he and Hundal will soon launch a new policy comparison tool on the project website freely available to the public. The resource will track policy metrics — such as border regulation and economic recovery program implementation timelines — and their impact on COVID-19 case counts using government data.

Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology professor Richard T. Lee ’79, who mentored Hundal when she was an undergraduate researcher in his lab, wrote in an email that he hopes “we have more efforts like this in the future.”

“The pandemic has shown how small the world is, and public health in the US requires that we also engage and understand other countries,” Lee wrote.

Hundal pointed out while the project has revealed unique approaches each nation has taken in response to the pandemic, leaders generally want to deliver similar messages about the crisis to other nations.

“What’s so heartening to find is that that message is always rooted in collaboration and cooperation and societies working together, and how through working together we can find ourselves on the better side of this crisis,” Hundal said. “I would say that’s a running theme that is very uplifting to see, that even during very challenging times like this we have leaders who are not siloed, who are trying to build bridges.”

—Staff writer Meera S. Nair can be reached at meera.nair@thecrimson.com.