Bill Warner: Thank you very much for taking the time to share some of your experiences as a humanities center director with me and the CHCI network during this pandemic. To start, I would like to ask if you would introduce the center that you direct: Where are you located? When was the center founded? What is the focus of your work?

Shaul Bassi: Yes, thank you, certainly. The Center for the Humanities and Social Change at Ca'Foscari University of Venice was founded in 2017 and is a joint initiative by our academic institution and the Humanities and Social Change International Foundation based in Hamburg, which supports three other humanities centers at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Humboldt Berlin, and the University of Cambridge. Initially focusing more generally on issues of cultural pluralism, we have recently adopted the environmental humanities as our main focus, a theme that has been with us since inaugurating the Center with Amitav Ghosh's lecture 'Humanities and Climate Change'. The climate crisis is the most urgent planetary problem, and we believe that the humanities have a key role to play to provide analyses and solutions, in close conversation with the natural and social sciences. The recent exceptional flooding in Venice on November 12, 2019 and our deserted streets during the COVID-19 outbreak have made our city even more a symbol of this global challenge and an ideal laboratory to address the crisis.

BW: I remember seeing some of the dramatic pictures of the piazza San Marco under water. Could you share with use some of the main activities and programs that the center operates?

SB:We support individual research projects and multiple collaborative initiatives; promote international conferences, seminars, workshops, summer schools, exhibitions, publications, educational modules, residencies, creative outputs, and high-profile partnerships. We have worked a lot on migration, racism, and intercultural dialogue. We address both academic and general audiences, with special attention to public dissemination and media visibility. We emphasize the role of Venice as a world capital of contemporary art and travel to showcase our themes for a global audience. Our guests have included Amitav Ghosh, Laurie Anderson, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Gloria Wekker, Edmund de Waal, Homi Bhabha, among others.

BW: And who are the major stakeholders or campus and community partners?

SB: The center cooperate with all university departments, with several cultural and educational institutions in town, and various international institutions operating in Venice. We are going to be the research laboratory of a brand-new Master Degree in Environmental Humanities starting in the fall 2020 and entirely taught in English (the first of its kind in Italy and one of the first in Europe). We have important partnerships with museums and international cultural institutions operating in Venice and various international academic relations.

BW: Congratulations on the new master's program; that sounds fantastic. I would like to shift, though, to talking a more specifically about the COVID-19 pandemic. Before it began, what projects were underway at the center?

SB: We were in the middle of a lecture and seminar series on Environmental Humanities, planning a conference on Afropean cultures, and a summer school on medical humanities. We have moved some of this online, trying to emphasize more the archival potential of these redesigned events.

BW: And, so, when did the pandemic begin to effect planning and programming at the center?

SB: For better and for worse, Italy was at the forefront of the virus outbreak in Europe, and northern regions have been the epicenter of the epidemics. A defining moment was the last weekend of Carnival, the most famous and crowded festivity in Venice. Schools were already shut down and our classes cancelled, but Carnival went on for days and Mardi Gras was cancelled only at the last minute.

BW: In that context, how did the university respond to COVID-19?

SB: Our university responded very swiftly, moving all teaching activities online in a very short time. We made the national news for holding graduations (which are individual examinations in our system) online, with students celebrating and being officially awarded their degree in their living rooms, often surrounded by their families. It was the very early stage of the quarantine.

BW: What values did you think were important to communicate to your team and community as COVID-19 changed your activity?

SB: Quite simply, that not only were our activities meant to carry on, but that it was even more important now to contribute ideas, sense of community, perspectives, and prospects. It was important to emphasize that the pandemic, caused by the spillover of animal microbes into human organisms, was dramatically confirming the relevance of the environmental humanities for our times. That our unique position as an interdisciplinary center could allow us to focus on organizing events while departments were understandably concentrating on adjusting their teaching activities.

BW: What technologies have you relied on in order to continue programs?

SB: The usual: our website, Zoom, Google Meet, Be.live, social networks. Some of our seminars have successfully moved online, providing a welcome moment of intellectual exchange during the quarantine. The irony is that some of these seminars have attracted more people across different countries than their original format would have done.

BW: How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced other issues that are important to the work of your center?

SB: Venice is a city that has been monopolized by tourism in recent decades, forcing other businesses, a growing number of residents, and particularly students outside of the city. The COVID-19 crisis has left the city stripped of its economic backbone, revealing the fragility and short-sightedness of this one-dimensional economy. The museums and cultural institutions with which we collaborate are all closed and have postponed, when not cancelled, their programs. On the other hand, it is precisely this situation that demonstrates that investing in tourism is risky and volatile. Investing in education, cultural initiatives, and repopulating the city will make the city less vulnerable in future crises and could revitalize the social fabric.

BW: Do you feel that that has led to any insights regarding the center itself, its activities, and the community?

SB: The paradoxical condition of Venice as a city that has never been cleaner, healthier, emptier because of the temporary disappearance of tourists (and massive cruise ships) has shown the impact of overtourism on the environment. Venice, already plagued by sea-level rise, must be reinvented now as a global hotspot of the climate crisis and the battle for a more sustainable planet. Venice could become an international laboratory where leading scientists, scholars, artists tackle the environmental crisis and formulate solutions that apply not only here but to all coastal cities in the world. Our University and our Center intend to play a leading scientific and cultural role in this process.

BW: And what about the humanities more broadly? What role do you see the humanities playing in the weeks and months ahead?

SB: Never as now has it been so clear that the humanities, with their powerful tools to analyze and interpret affect, narratives, imaginary, are an indispensable component. Science and politics have taken center stage in the current debate, often in mutual conflict. But what escapes many actors (let alone ordinary observers) is that these domains of presumed objective knowledge or decision-making all depend on language, plots and narratives, notions of individual and collective identity, visions and visionaries - in short: the arts and humanities. The real challenge is to demonstrate this relevance, even more so at a moment where the cultural sector is deeply hurt by the COVID 19 situation.