Event Description

In this interactive, hybrid event, Alicia Ely Yamin, JD, MPH, PhD, moderated a conversation with investigative journalist and author Tim Schwab about his latest book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Audiences, both in-person and online, had the opportunity to join in the discussion. This event was part of HGHI’s Scholarly Working Group Initiative. It was co-hosted by the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and in partnership with the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights and the Program on Law and Policial Economy at Harvard Law School.

Panelists

About Tim Schwab

Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist based in Washington, DC. His groundbreaking reporting on the Gates Foundation for The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and The British Medical Journal has been honored with an Izzy Award and a Deadline Club Award. The Bill Gates Problem is his first book.

The New York Times recently highlighted his forthcoming book (Henry Holt Books), The Bill Gates Problem, as one to look out for in November; Booklist (American Library Association) gave it a starred review; and Kirkus called it an “An eye-opening look at the use of tax-subsidized money by private philanthropy.”

The book builds on an investigative series I published in 2020 and 2021, which was funded through an Alicia Patterson reporting fellowship. This series won an Izzy Prize (from Ithaca College) and a Deadline Club Award (from the Society of Professional Journalists), and was a finalist for a Mirror Award (from Syracuse University). The Nation nominated his series on Gates for a Pulitzer.

His reporting on Gates has appeared in The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and the British Medical Journal, and represents some of the only investigative journalism ever published on Gates.

You can read more about Tim Schwab on his website.

About Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin, JD, MPH, PhD, is a Lecturer on Law and the Senior Fellow on Global Health and Rights at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Health Policy at the global health justice organization, Partners In Health.

Known globally for her trans-disciplinary work in relation to economic and social rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, the right to health, and the intersections between development paradigms and human rights, Yamin’s career has bridged academia and activism. She has lived in Latin America and East Africa for much of her professional life and worked with local advocacy organizations, including co-founding a program on health and human rights in the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Lima, Peru; 1999).

Yamin was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of ten international experts to the Independent Accountability Panel for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health in the Sustainable Development Goals (2016-2021). She was the chief consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and drafter of the ‘Technical guidance on the application of a human-rights based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal morbidity and mortality’, the first guidance on a ‘human rights-based approach to health’ to be adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.

Yamin holds Juris Doctor and Master’s in Public Health degrees from Harvard University, and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She has published multiple books and over 160 articles in law and policy journals, as well as peer-reviewed public health journals, in both English and Spanish. A revised and substantially expanded edition of her latest monograph, When Misfortune becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, is out from Stanford University Press in 2023.

You can read more about Alicia Ely Yamin on her faculty page.

Sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and in partnership with the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights and the Program on Law and Policial Economy at Harvard Law School.