• UConn Professor Believes There's No Such Thing As A "Natural Disaster", Blames Racism And Government Policies

    October 1, 2024
    Associate Professor Andy Horowitz
    Photo Credit: University of Connecticut

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    University of Connecticut Associate Professor of History Andy Horowitz visited Colgate University to give a lecture on his book, “Katrina: A History, 1915-2015,” on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.

    Horowitz wants students to change their thinking about "natural disasters" like Hurricane Katrina.

    “Disasters are not unpredictable attacks or acts of God that arrive without precedent,” Horowitz told the audience. “Their causes and consequences reach across much longer periods of time and space than we commonly imagined.”

    Horowitz argues that "race, class and state policy" are "deeply tied" to natural disasters, and that these "structural issues" are to blame for "creating conditions for disaster to strike" well before a disaster like Hurricane Katrina actually happens, and are also to blame for the conditions after a disaster.

    “Racism played a defining role in determining who could return afterward,” asserted Horowitz who went on to describe a post-Katrina New Orleans as being riddled with "systemic racism". 

    One first-year student remarked that Horowitz's assertion that there’s "no such thing as a natural disaster" really stood out. "It’s not just about the destruction of Katrina. Policies that were supposed to help ended up reinforcing inequality,” he said.

    Horowitz's bio on the UConn website indicates that his "research focuses on disasters and the questions they give rise to about race, class, community, trauma, inequality, the welfare state, extractive industry, metropolitan development, and environmental change."

    It also mentions a book that Horowitz co-edited called, Critical Disaster Studies.

    Screenshot, Amazon

    From Amazon's description:

    This book announces the new, interdisciplinary field of critical disaster studies. Unlike most existing approaches to disaster, critical disaster studies begins with the idea that disasters are not objective facts, but rather are interpretive fictions—and they shape the way people see the world. By questioning the concept of disaster itself, critical disaster studies reveals the stakes of defining people or places as vulnerable, resilient, or at risk.

    Horowitz and his co-editor, state in the introduction:

    So here is a new idea: there is no such thing as a disaster.

    There are floods and earthquakes, wars and famines, engineering failures and economic collapses, but to describe any of these things as a disaster represents an act of interpretation. The first principle of critical disaster studies is the insistence that “disaster” itself is an analytical conceit.

    What critical disaster studies really sounds like is the application of critical race theory to disasters and disaster response efforts.

    Screenshot, Emerald Insight

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    The Connecticut Centinal is the state’s premier investigative newspaper. Long suffering from an absence of patriotic media, Connecticut is in dire need of an organization which will confront, and highlight, corruption in the jurisdiction. Connecticut is an historic state with a long and honorable reputation of defending freedom. The Connecticut Centinal will follow in CDM’s tradition of providing trustworthy news as we rebuild the American republic from the cradle of liberty.

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    4 Comments
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    Michael Satagaj

    Men without chests forever seek to reduce the sturdy man’s personal constitution of virtue, independence, responsibility, achievement, etc. to the collective matrix of equal misery/gruel/bondage… because… fair.

    Juveniles. Poseurs. Faux intellectuals of shallow composition casting nonsense and somehow acquiring the station and influence to assert childish authority over the sturdy man.

    Men without chests…

    Ken

    I wouldn't want this so-called "professor" anywhere near my kids. Seems he has a Ph.D in ignorance & stupidity. The cancer that infests colleges & universities is astounding.

    Paul A

    Fire him, thats how you keep the greatest country on earth the place everyone looks up to for an opportunity. Fire him. If he is indoctrinating our children against parents beliefs regarding how our kids should be raised, fire him, teachers do not have the right to form our children. Get over yourself, if he is not educating our children with the tools to make them successful. Fire him. Climate change phobia needs a forced vaccination. Just like Covid. It’s all BS. Fire him.

    Michael Satagaj

    Paul,

    That's a decent sentiment, but...

    1. His boss loves the product, and will do no such thing.
    2. Most of CT has abandoned the virtues and responsibilities of Liberty and individual sovereignty and demand the equal outcomes that only a nanny state with nanny ideas could offer.
    3. Embrace the battle against this abomination - and the resultant energy that courses through your veins.
    4. An opportunity will arise to dispatch...somehow.

    In Liberty
    MS

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